Piecing Together Strategies for Better Cancer Patient Experience
Creating a better cancer patient experience will require organizations to piece together efforts from across various clinical and social work departments.
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By Sara Heath
- Like puzzle pieces coming together to form a picture, stakeholders from across the care continuum must come together to successfully enhance the cancer patient experience.
As a team, leaders from the clinical, administrative, and social or care navigation sectors can work together to address the biggest oncology pain points, allowing patients and their families the environment they need to focus on health, wellness, and recovery, according to Andre Dahinden, a managing partner with healthcare consulting firm Accenture.
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Dahinden recently authored a report with Accenture exploring the changing landscape of cancer care. Very little has changed for cancer patients—the fundamental goal is recovery and remission—but at the same time, so much has changed.
Not every cancer diagnosis is a death sentence, Dahinden said during an episode of the Healthcare Strategies podcast, and more patients and their providers and families are working to understand what that means for the overall care experience and chronic care management.
“People want to be part of decision making, not just be the subject about which decisions are taken,” Dahinden explained. “This emancipation, it's a great thing, but also healthcare systems and physicians need to cope with it.”
And as the oncology field, like so much of healthcare, gives way to the insurgence of healthcare consumerism, it will have to reconfigure how it can meet the needs of patients across four basic fronts: access to better information (and sifting through misinformation); more patient engagement and involvement in care; holistic care and mental health integration; and streamlining organizational hassle.
Those fixes won’t come easy, although many organizations might already have the tools for making them. That’s because it must be an orchestrated effort across numerous domains, Dahinden said.
“This is about the ecosystem,” Dahinden explained. “It's about the healthcare providers, the physicians, the nurses, the pharmacists, and the non-healthcare providers—which are as important—the payers, the families, the employers.”
“The true value comes out of the bringing like a puzzle piece together, which helps the patient navigate through this labyrinth at these stages in this fight against a very difficult disease,” Dahinden concluded.
