Physicians News Health news for doctors and patients.
By Michelle Andrews
On an afternoon a few weeks ago, Faithe Craig noticed that her temperature spiked to just above 100 degrees. For most people, the change might not be cause for alarm, but Craig is being treated for stage 3 breast cancer, and any temperature change could signal a serious problem.
She called her nurse at the hospital clinic where she gets care at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who told her to come in immediately for cancer urgent-care services at the hospital’s hematology oncology clinic.
“I thought I’d be waiting there all night,” said Craig, 33. But the hospital had already lined up a blood draw before she arrived and then sent her directly to get X-rays.
Clinicians had details of her cancer care at their fingertips. “They already knew my story and knew everything about me,” she said. The blood work showed she had severe anemia, requiring a blood transfusion, pronto.
It’s been more than a year since the medical center began providing same-day urgent care services to cancer patients. It’s an effort to help them avoid the emergency department and hospital admissions, said Dr. Thomas Froehlich, medical director of the all the center’s cancer clinics.
Cancer treatment “clearly carries a lot of side effects and toxicity, and there are also complications of dealing with the cancer,” Froehlich said. “Many of these things, if you can intervene early, you keep patients at home and out of the hospital.”
UT Southwestern isn’t alone. A small but growing number of hospitals and oncology practices are incorporating urgent care aimed specifically at cancer patients, in which specialists are available for same-day appointments, often with extended hours, sometimes 24/7.
Keeping cancer patients out of the emergency department makes sense not only because many of them have compromised immune systems that put them at risk in a waiting room full of sick people, but to provide the most efficient and appropriate care.
“What we hear from cancer physicians and administrators is that in the emergency department not all emergency physicians and nurses feel equally confident in their ability to treat cancer patients,” said Lindsay Conway, managing director of research at the Advisory Board, a health care research and consulting firm. “So they may admit them when it’s not necessary.”
Severe pain, nausea, fever and dehydration are not uncommon side effects of traditional chemotherapy. Newer immunotherapy treatments that activate the immune system to fight cancer can cause serious and sudden reactions if the body instead attacks healthy organs and tissues.
It can be difficult for non-cancer specialists to evaluate what these symptoms mean. “Targeted therapies are wonderful, but if you don’t know the drug, you’re going to have a hard time managing the person,” said Dr. Barbara McAneny, CEO of New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants in Albuquerque, which operates three cancer centers in New Mexico that together provide same-day urgent care services for more than a dozen cancer patients daily.
Offering same-day services fits in with a broader shift in oncology toward patient-centered care, said Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society.
“There’s a general sense within the practice of oncology that we need to do a better job of managing pain and side effects, and we need to provide a higher level of care,” Lichtenfeld said.
