Six Imperatives in Cancer Care

Nice poster outline for the imperatives to delivering excellent cancer care from the Advisory Board company

THeir Top 6 list:

1) Ensure adherence to evidence based guidelines

Seems obvious but often forgotten - 13% of Colon cancer patients receive non evidence based care.

2) Reduce unnecessary IP and ED utilization

The medical home is key to ongoing efforts to reduce the need for these services but maintain the patient/provider engagement and interaction

3) Focus Service investments on Services that increase Quality

Staging of the disease both for treatment and the reduction in the stress to patients remains a big target for improvement

4) Enhance Patient-Provider Communication

Lack of ability for patients to absorb the complexity of the information and ease of accessing guidance and provider are ongoing problems - there is much resistance to e-mail but reality os that written communication holds much value and the bonus of being able to refer back to it easily

5) Engage patient and families in End of Life PLanning

 - this was covered in a recent piece on the WSJ: 

Why Cancer Care and Palliative Care Should Be Combined

Its not about giving up

That doesn’t mean oncologists are being encouraged to give up on extending the lives of those patients

Rather, the guidelines recommend combining palliative care — open and honest communication about the progress of the disease and the patient’s wishes, medical appropriate goal-setting and careful attention to symptom management — with standard oncology care)

Often forgotten in the desperate attempts and desires to fight the disease and frightening outcomes

6) Leverage Networks to advance cost and Quality goals

THis boils down to care coordination and communication. Ease of sharing all the data across systems, providers and facilities. We have much work to do here. Imagine if banks had the same status of coordination as healthcare - we would have to have accounts in every bank that we deal with and all duplicate data (and fees). No accessing cash or credit from any terminal or merchant......

Posted via email from drnic's posterous