Johns Hopkins has long been recognized for having some of the strongest individual departments for fighting lung cancer, with world-class experts in thoracic surgery, medical oncology and radiation oncology. But recently, says radiation oncologist Russell Hales, it’s become increasingly clear that having robust but separate departments isn’t what’s most important for many patients.
“When they come to us,” says Hales, “they’re not interested in pillars of care where they go from experts on one side of the institution to the other. They come in with lung cancer and want it treated by all of their doctors together, ideally in one place.”
That’s why Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center launched a multidisciplinary lung cancer program within the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. While these three departments were previously separate, requiring separate appointments and multiple treks across campus, now all providers are physically based in the same new, state-of-the-art facility on that campus, which opened in 2015.
Such close proximity provides a patient’s care team an easier way to consult frequently about progress and proposed treatment plans, says thoracic surgeon Richard Battafarano. “Being in a shared space facilitates dialogue to an almost 24-hours, seven-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year degree,” he explains.
The new facility also makes visits exponentially easier for patients, adds medical oncologist Julie Brahmer. “It’s more patient-centered care,” she says.
Coordinators can book new patients with a suspected diagnosis of lung cancer for multiple appointments the first time they visit the center, explains Brahmer, with each of the appointments taking place at the Kimmel Cancer Center on the Bayview Campus. Although it often makes for a long day, patients can book scans and other diagnostic tests along with appointments with multiple specialists on the same visit. “By the end of the day,” she says, “patients walk out with a treatment plan agreed upon by all the specialties.”
Such collaboration among multiple departments also eases the burden on referring physicians, adds Battafarano. Rather than needing to choose which type of specialist to initially see their patient—a process often complicated by uncertainty about patient diagnosis and staging—physicians can turn to a panel of Johns Hopkins experts who work together to decide which experts are best suited to care for patients based on their evaluation and workup.
Having a coordinated care team for each patient also greatly simplifies communication with referring physicians, says Hales, providing one point of contact and communication.
In addition to making lung cancer care easier for both patients and referring physicians, the program has had an additional and unexpected benefit: better outcomes for patients. By comparing outcomes data from recent years before the multidisciplinary clinic launched to afterward, ongoing research by Hales and his colleagues suggests that patients treated in a coordinated fashion live longer, with improvements comparable to those achieved by the latest therapeutic advances, such as new pharmaceuticals and targeted therapies.
“A better system of health care delivery seems to have advantages that can play in the big leagues as much as any new, innovative therapy out there today,” says Hales.
This new approach is bringing patients ever closer to the ultimate goal, says Brahmer: a cure for their lung cancer. “Our hope is that patients’ lung cancer will be eradicated and they’ll never have to worry about it again,” she says. “We’re working toward that through patient-centered, coordinated and personalized care.”