No gain – except helping patients
After Dr. Dooreck conceived of CRC POP, in September 2020, he described his plan for consolidating links to free resources in a video conference with the organizations he aimed to include. The organizations immediately agreed, and the text-based service, with technology provided free of charge by the marketing company EZ Texting, went live the following month.
“There’s no hook, there’s no cost, there’s no sale, it’s not monetized. There’s no gain except helping people,” Dr. Dooreck emphasized.
Dr. Lewis agreed: “I think it’s a great initiative, and it helps unify some of the guidance we give these folks.”
Dr. Lewis has the rare perspective of seeing the issue from standpoint of both an oncologist and a patient: Early in his hematology-oncology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in 2009, he was diagnosed with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, and he subsequently underwent surgery to resect pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.
He says that the buy-in for CRC POP from major support organizations and from gastroenterologists alike is important because most colonoscopies are performed and diagnoses are made in community settings by gastroenterologists who may or may not have formal connections with a cancer center, rather than in large urban or suburban networks affiliated with medical schools.
In most cases, he said, the gastroenterologist makes the CRC diagnosis, and hands the patient off to a surgeon, who may connect with a medical oncologist and/or radiation oncologist depending on the individual patient’s circumstance. This process can take weeks, and in the meantime, patients are left in limbo.
Offering patients multiple trustworthy resources through a simple text message is a particularly appealing part of the CRC POP initiative, and can help patients feel that they are more in control of their care, Dr. Lewis said.
Useful resources, multidisciplinary care
The connection to resources offered by CRC POP is valuable and may be especially helpful for community-based or small gastroenterology practices; on the other hand, large academic medical centers may be able to provide more resources on their own.
Caroline Kuhlman
“We have home-grown support services that we make available to patients if they either ask for them or if we ascertain that those services would be important components of their care,” Caroline Kuhlman, a nurse practitioner from The Tucker Gosnell Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers at Massachusetts General Cancer Center in Boston, explained in an interview. “Our approach to a newly diagnosed patient happens in the context of a multidisciplinary visit.”
“Newly diagnosed patients meet with a surgeon, a medical oncologist, sometimes a radiation oncologist if that’s going to be a part their care, and whenever possible during the same outpatient visit. Patients are also provided with written information about colon cancer, and we have a patient resource center that has even more information about support from various organizations,” she said.
Patients can also be referred as needed to other resources within the hospital system, including nutritionists, social workers who can help to determine whether patients could benefit from additional social and financial support, and educational resources such as information sessions on what to expect if they receive chemotherapy.
Similarly, Dr. Lewis said that, at Intermountain Health Care, patients newly diagnosed with cancer are contacted within 24 hours by patient navigators who help them manage concerns and expectations about their care and connect them to resources both in the hospital and the community.
Although their own practices differ in size and scope and in the resources they can offer patients, the clinicians interviewed for this article agreed with the central message and purpose of CRC POP: “You are not alone. You have our support.”
Dr. Lewis, Dr. Dooreck, and Ms. Kuhlman reported having no conflicts of interest relevant to the subjects discussed in this article.