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SALT LAKE CITY — Marc Harrison, president and CEO at Intermountain Healthcare, has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.
He plans to continue his work at Intermountain throughout treatment, which will extend into early 2020.
“Cancer is never good news, of course, but I have every reason to hope for a successful outcome,” Harrison said in a printed statement. “I am proud and grateful that my care will be provided by Intermountain caregivers — the best in the land.”
Multiple myeloma, which affects plasma in the bone marrow and crowds out healthy cells, is the second-most commonly diagnosed blood cancer, after non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Cancer is never good news, of course, but I have every reason to hope for a successful outcome.
–Marc Harrison, Intermountain Healthcare
There is no cure for it, but Harrison said the cancer can be managed with a range of therapies and treated as a chronic disease.
“Many people live successfully with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma,” he said. “This is my chronic disease.”
Harrison has been serving at the helm of Intermountain Healthcare, a not-for-profit health care system of 24 hospitals and 215 clinics in Utah, Idaho and Nevada, since October 2016. He is trained in pediatrics and critical care and previously worked at Intermountain’s Primary Children’s Hospital and was CEO at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.
