Lindsay Conway on February 27, 2012 |
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Topics: Oncology, Service Lines, Patient-Focused Care, Methodologies, Performance Improvement, Access to Care, Quality
In recent years, oncology clinic staff have experienced a steady rise in the number of phone calls that they receive from patients and families each day. There are many factors contributing to this increase including, the shift of cancer care into the outpatient setting, growing treatment complexity, and rising use of oral therapies. Ensuring that patients and families’ concerns are addressed in a timely way is an essential component of high quality cancer care, yet due to the sheer volume of calls, it is becoming increasingly difficult for clinic staff to manage incoming phone calls along with their many other duties.
In order to help members manage increasing call volumes, the Oncology Roundtable undertook a review of recent journal articles on the topic. Key findings and analysis are summarized below.
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Clinic telephone call benchmarks and lessons for management
on February 14, 2012 |
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Topics: Oncology, Service Lines, Medical Oncology, Evidence-Based Practice, Methodologies, Performance Improvement
Anne Taylor, Oncology Roundtable
The adoption of clinical pathways is in cancer care is gaining ground. The Oncology Times reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan collaborated with Oncology Physician Resource (OPR), a physician-owned practice management group, to implement clinical pathways in 2010 in a partnership with P4 Healthcare, LLC, a health management company and clinical pathway developer.
Today, 80% of Michigan’s community oncology practices, along with the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center and the Josephine Ford Cancer Center at the Henry Ford Health System, participate in the pathways program. Dr. Kurt Neumann, President of OPR, said that the success of the pathways program has been beyond what anyone expected and that he is certain that the pathways have resulted in decreased cost.
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Clinical pathway adoption gaining ground
on February 2, 2012 |
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Topics: Oncology, Service Lines
Anne Taylor, Oncology Roundtable
With the updated Commission on Cancer (CoC) standards, many cancer programs are reevaluating registry staffing levels. In our last Oncology Rounds post, we presented the results of our Cancer Registry Staffing Quickpoll.
Here, we provide a worksheet to assist in registrar staff benchmarking for those of you interested in generating institution-specific benchmarks; please note that the methods are adapted from an ACE presentation by Brenda Gordon, of Oncology Management Consulting. Gordon’s benchmarking formula takes into account the many tasks and responsibilities of the cancer registrar to determine the necessary FTEs for a given program.
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Calculating custom benchmarks for optimal registry staffing
