Cancer Care at Home: Opportunities, Risks, and How to Prepare

The CPC and CBEx Annual Congress, on October 6-8, creates an interactive environment for cancer care stakeholders to explore and share practical approaches to relevant issues.

CBEx Advisory Board Member John Hennessy, MBA, Valuate Health Consultancy, previews his featured session, “Cancer Care at Home: Opportunities, Risks, and How to Prepare,” including the possibilities and challenges that exist in delivering cancer care at home and focusing on true patient centricity.

Register today to improve your practical knowledge about how to effectively implement cancer care at home so it best serves the patients.

Transcript:

John Hennessy, MBA: Hi, my name is John Hennessy. I’m a principal and strategist at Valuate Health Consultancy, and at the Cancer Care Business Exchange, I'll be leading a discussion on cancer care at home. You know, sort of the opportunities that exist there, the challenges that exist there, and how we make sure we're delivering care to patients in a way that makes sense for patients, that we're really being patient centric. Not just saying, “I've got a nice facility to you for you to come to,” but how can I take the care that you need to a place that makes sense for you as a patient, as part of our community.

So, why does this matter for the cancer care community? Well, I think we thought that COVID was the reason we were focused on care at home. But it turns out, I think it's really just a fulcrum. It's just what got us to think about this and thinking about it in a way that wasn't just an emergency but think about the possibilities that exist.

And fortunately, we've been able to come out of this pandemic or into this endemic situation with this idea that maybe there is an opportunity to think about how we take care of patients differently. That it's not just about building big, shiny facilities and encouraging patients to come in, but thinking about the needs of patients who have transportation challenges; to think about patients for whom coming to a practice site for a brief visit or a brief therapy might be challenging; or to think about patients who have side effects or adverse events in a home setting, and how do we take care to them and treat them in a setting as comfortable for them rather than say, “Go to an emergency room,” or “Go to the hospital,” or “Go to the clinic and wait for a couple of hours until I can get to you.”

It's all about rethinking what patient centricity is. And patient centricity isn't just building a porte cochère so when it's raining, the patient can get out of the car and not get wet. It's thinking about how do we make patient care make sense for the patient.

So, in this session the main points we plan to cover are, what does cancer care at home mean? You know what are the types of services that we're talking about delivering to patients? We'll also talk about practical application. Who's doing what type of care and how they're integrating that into their communities, into the care they provide to their entire patient communities. And we'll also talk about the risks involved here. You know, there are legitimate concerns about where we deliver care and how we deliver care; we have to make that part of the conversation.

But I think the best part of what we're doing is we're going to save time for a conversation with you in the audience. We want you to be part of our discussion; we want you to be able to ask questions, so you can take something home to your practice, to your community, and see where cancer care at home fits for you.

We have a great set of folks going to be on our panel on cancer care at home. Aaron Gerber comes from Reimagine Care, which is absolutely 100% focused on trying to figure out what's the right care to deliver to patients at home and how to deliver it. Barry Russo, from the CCBD will be there. He's going to talk about their real-life application of cancer care at home, and how they've partnered with Reimagine Care to find ways to meet patients where they are.

We'll also talk with Raj Hazarika from Point32 Health, a payer, and see how they view this opportunity and they view the challenges as well. Lindsey Zinck from the University of Pennsylvania is going to join our panel. University of Pennsylvania has been doing cancer care at home, both during the pandemic and after the pandemic, and has figured out how to make that fit into their entire delivery system.

And Barb McAneny will be around as well; Barb works in her own practice in New Mexico, and she works in an environment where delivering cancer care at home can be really challenging sometimes. She has a lot of rural patients; she has patients who have difficult socioeconomic and family situations. And thinking about how best to deliver care to that population, and whether cancer care at home is a good fit for everyone there or not such a good fit.

So, I think we have a really broad set of panelists who can deliver real-world experience with both the upsides, the real opportunities there, but also the challenges as well.

And the last panelist in the session is you. You're going to be in the audience. They are going to be microphones out there, and we're relying on you to step up to the microphone. Bring your experience, bring your challenges, bring your assessment of risk and opportunity, and help us talk about this challenge and this real opportunity for patients.

The thing that's most exciting to me about this session is we're talking about patients. We're talking about figuring out how to take care to patients where they are, where they need the care, and what we can do really well there, what we may want to think about whether we deliver in that fashion.

But the session is really all about patients. It's really about figuring out the best way to get the right care to the right place at the right time, in a way that's convenient for patients, that respects the time they want to spend at home and maximizes that within the journey that they're taking.