One clinical standard of care across all regions and disciplines
By Brian Bolwell, MD, FACP
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As a large cancer center, one of our challenges is clinical alignment with our numerous locations. We have many regional clinics and hospitals that deliver cancer care — how do we promote one clinical standard of care?
Two words: cancer programming.
Each cancer program is a disease-based team comprised of physicians from different specialties as well as nurses and other support staff. Team-based care for each cancer diagnosis is critical. Programming allows us to prioritize and structure different aspects of team-based care, including multidisciplinary clinics, tumor boards, care paths and reduction in time to treat. These elements are tracked on scorecards, and each program is accountable to an executive committee for its results. We devote resources such as program managers and patient navigators to each program.
Three elements are especially key to the success of cancer programming:
Clinical integration of regional assets is important and requires significant effort. We believe that developing disease-based programs and working on shared initiatives such as the development of care paths, robust regional tumor board participation and reducing time to treatment, has allowed us to achieve successful clinical integration of our diverse repertoire of assets.
Dr. Bolwell is Chair of Physician Leadership and Development and former Chair of Taussig Cancer Institute. On Twitter: @BrianBolwellMD
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