Building Brooklyn: Drs Borgen & Feinberg on Breast Cancer Surgery's Future
Patrick Borgen, MD, built Brooklyn's breast cancer program from 47 patients to 8,000. Now he and Joshua Feinberg, MD discuss what surgery looks like next.
In this episode of The Moonlight Shift, Gina Mauro sits down with Patrick Borgen, MD—2026 Giant of Cancer Care® inductee and the physician who built the breast cancer program at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn from the ground up—and Joshua Feinberg, MD, his former trainee and the program's rising leader. What follows is one of the most personal conversations the show has produced: a story about an underserved borough, a deliberate choice to leave one of the country's most prestigious cancer centers, and what it actually means to recruit for values before ability.
Why Brooklyn
Borgen spent 18 years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center before leaving at age 50—not for another academic center, but for Brooklyn, which he describes as the largest medically underserved large city in the Western Hemisphere. Nearly three million people, no cancer center, no breast center. His program treated 47 patients in its first year. Last fall it reached breast cancer patient number 8000. The driver, he says, was culture—specifically the belief that empathy and compassion were not soft skills but the foundation of clinical outcomes. When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, she talks to 26 people on average. Patient-to-patient referrals built the program more than any other factor.
Why Feinberg Came Back
Feinberg trained at Maimonides, completed fellowships at Oxford and NYU Langone, and had options. He came back because of the culture Borgen built—"collegiality, collaboration, all the doctors working together to keep the patient at the forefront"—and because Brooklyn's patient population presented clinical challenges no textbook could prepare him for. He and a radiation oncology colleague are currently studying the financial toxicities of cancer diagnosis in their underserved community. In one recent afternoon, the program saw 14 patients speaking 14 different languages. The flags of their 14 countries were posted to Instagram.
The First Visit and the Future of Surgery
The episode's most resonant moment comes when Borgen describes a mini living room his program created—couches, soft chairs, a space designed to slow down the first conversation. Twenty-five-year survivors, he says, still remember every detail of that first visit. "As I have gotten older, that first visit is everything. More important than the surgery that we do." On the future of the field, both physicians agree that de-escalation will continue—but Borgen argues the surgeon will remain the quarterback, the gatekeeper who holds the widest clinical view across surgery, genetics, medicine, radiation, and plastic surgery. Feinberg adds that de-escalation of systemic therapy is the field's next frontier.
The Close
In the episode's final minutes, both physicians speak directly to each other. Feinberg thanks Borgen for being both a mentor and a friend. Borgen's answer is personal—a mention of fishing with Feinberg's daughter Dorothy—and then direct: "When I retire, this program is in great hands. You're the person I would choose." He adds, with characteristic humor, that he intends to do two mastectomies on the day of his own wake.
The Moonlight Shift is available on
