The Future of Cancer Care At Home

In this interview, Dan Nardi, CEO of Reimagine Care, discusses the future of cancer care in the home. He spoke at the 2023 Clinical Pathways Congress + Cancer Care Business Exchange as part of a session titled “Cancer Care at Home: Opportunities, Risks, and How to Prepare.”

Transcript:

Dan Nardi: Hello, my name is Dan Nardi, I am CEO of Reimagine Care and we are a company that is hoping to deliver cancer care and cancer treatment virtually and in the home.

What are you the most excited to share with attendees?

Dan Nardi: I think I am most excited to share the progress on moving cancer care into the home and also the potential of where we can take this. Obviously, as we heard in the session we just had, there’s a lot of potential, but we also have to be really thoughtful in how we approach it.

What do you see as having the biggest impact on cancer care?

Dan Nardi: Yeah, in addition to identifying the right opportunities to deliver care virtually in the home, I think one of the other ones is also, regulation. There’s a lot of barriers when it comes to not only the price and their reimbursements and anything else for care in the home, but also broadly across the entire cancer delivery landscape and so I think that there is an opportunity to really look at how the care is delivered but also how it’s paid for and a lot of that will come back to regulations.

What are some of the major trends for cancer care?

Dan Nardi: One of the trends that we have seen, and this was certainly accelerated by the pandemic was patients and providers willingness and openness to actually have their cancer care delivered in the home. I think it was already on this path, there are certain organizations that really were trailblazers in this, Penn was one, and there have been a handful of others that in their own systems were starting to deliver the care in the home for a better patient experience, for a better provider experience, the pandemic certainly turbocharged that and I think just in general, the entire kind of system, on both sides, patients and providers, are now much more open to having any of their care delivered remotely, in the home and certainly that’s also the same case with the cancer perspective and so I think there’s an opportunity for the right patients going through certain treatments and I think we talked about earlier, this isn’t for everyone, but I think there is a huge opportunity for a large enough population to have a real impact and to deliver better patient experiences and to reduce the financial toxicity and the time toxicity when it comes to their cancer treatments.

What are the benefits and challenges of cancer care at home?

Dan Nardi: Well, I think, I just touched on that, one of the one of the most important benefits is that time toxicity, it is what we have been talking about lately. This is care where we are asking patients to come into a clinic, in some cases they’re driving hours from their home to come in and get this treatment where it might be very possible that they could get that same treatment at home. So it’s a time commitment for them, it’s for their loved ones, to be able to drive in, even if you are in more urban areas, it may not seem that far away distance wise, but time wise, with traffic and parking, the extra costs of parking, and where you have to pay for that. So there’s the financial toxicity, there’s the time toxicity, that I think if we are able to reduce those barriers, it’ll allow people to get the highest quality care, in the comfort of their home around loved ones, that’s just, it is a much better patient experience and also from the provider experience too. We know that there’s a nursing and doctor shortage. It's happening right now and it is only projected to get worse and so by allowing systems to be set up to deliver care in the home, you’re setting it up for more scalable solutions and I think that’s the really important part of all of this. We have an aging population, we have more and more patients that are being diagnosed with cancer every year, we have to think more holistically about how can we deliver these solutions at scale, so I think there’s also the provider aspect of this as well, and just the broader health system aspect.

Is there anything you’d like to expand on?

Dan Nardi: I think when it comes to cancer care at home, one of the most important things is it’s not a question of if we are going to be able to do care in the home or even the treatment in the home. I think it’s a matter of when and who. I think we have already proven that there is an opportunity with symptom management, med adherence, whole person support. We can do all of those, it’s been done by certain organizations, we mentioned Penn earlier, you know, organizations like Reimagine Care are being able to do this at scale for health systems across the country, so that is absolutely happening and now the next challenge is how are we able to deliver for the right patient population, for the right treatment. Can we start moving the treatments into the home, and I think that’s gonna become a really big game changer when you think about sustainability of cancer care for a growing population to move forward.