Association of Community Cancer Centers Recognizes 6 Innovators
The Association of Community Cancer Centers has announced six winners of its annual Innovator awards, including Mount Sinai Health System’s creation of the first advanced practice radiation therapist role in the United States. The six winners will be recognized and make presentations about their innovations at the ACCC annual conference in Austin, Texas from Oct. 4 through 6. Below are brief summaries of the projects from the ACCC website.
• New York-based Mount Sinai’s Department of Radiation Oncology said that the creation of the first advanced practice radiation therapist (APRT) role in the United States established a new model of inpatient care, elevating the radiation therapy skill set and allowing for intervention at key points along the radiation oncology care pathway. Outcomes include improved quality, efficiency, and time and cost savings toward value-based care. Working in tandem with a rotation of radiation oncologists, the APRT aims to save physician time—and reduce physician burnout—by task-shifting and assuming lower-level responsibilities that support the care of resource intensive patient populations.
• St. Elizabeth Cancer Center in Edgewood, Ky., developed a model for demonstrating sustainable outreach for cancer screening. For several years, this healthcare system struggled to find a sustainable program to perform outreach to patients with outstanding orders for lung, breast, and colon cancer screenings. A financial analysis of associated expenses, reimbursement, payer mixture, and downstream revenue of these screening efforts demonstrated positive net return on investment, allowing for expansion and implementation of the Population Health Support Services team to perform this task. In 2022, 12 outreach specialists scheduled visits that accounted for 38 percent of completed lung cancer screenings and 15 percent of completed breast cancer screenings for this healthcare system.
• Rochester Regional Health – Lipson Cancer Institute in New York created a model for embedding counseling in oncology and palliative care. This cancer program adapted the University of Washington’s Collaborative Care model to embed counseling services into oncology and palliative care across six clinic locations. This model allows patients to receive counseling for depression, anxiety, or other psycho-social concerns while in active treatment and survivorship, eliminating many barriers to care. Counseling is provided in-person or virtually, ensuring that critical support and mental health care are accessible to all, including patients in rural areas and those who are homebound.
• Orlando Health Cancer Institute in Florida leveraged technology to develop an express symptom management program and prevent oncology emergency department visits. A business intelligence-enabled dashboard collected and analyzed data on ED visits, admits, and discharges, which was then used to improve patient triage and evaluation. After targeted in-service training and education to clinical teams and patients on utilization of the Express Symptom Management program, only 2 percent of patients needed to be seen in the ED, with the rest receiving symptom management by phone, participating in a virtual clinic visit, and/or coming into the infusion suite for in-person assessment and treatment. Improvement efforts around patient self-management and triage to the Express Symptom Management program also included development of a pre- and post-initial infusion visit via Epic MyChart.
• Oncology Hematology Care Inc. of Cincinnati standardized comprehensive biomarker testing in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A one-year quality improvement (QI) project implemented and standardized comprehensive biomarker testing in patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Custom data reports and monitoring dashboards ensured practice-wide adoption and sustainability across multiple clinic sites. After increasing biomarker testing rates from 68 percent to 92.7 percent, this QI project is now being scaled across the country through the US Oncology Network, McKesson as a best-practice initiative.
• Duke Cancer Institute, Duke Endo Oncology Program, Duke Endocrinology in North Carolina implemented e-consults for immune-related toxicities to improve patient access and reduce costs. Implementing e-consults for patients experiencing endocrine immune-related adverse events (irAEs) improved patient access and reduced healthcare utilization. Time to appointment and hospitalizations were reduced from 61 days to 39 days and from 11 percent to 2 percent, respectively. To propel integration and scalability, the next step is to ensure adequate reimbursement from payers for these types of e-consults.
