Health system leaders are facing growing pressure to align cancer program growth with broader organizational priorities — all while demand for oncology services continues to rise.
In a recent “Becker’s Healthcare Clinical Leadership Podcast” episode, Robert Figlin, MD, the Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Hematology Oncology at Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, interim director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer and interim director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, shared how Cedars-Sinai is approaching access, workforce design and distributed care models to meet those competing demands.
Question: From your vantage point, where do you most often see misalignment between a cancer program’s growth ambitions and broader system priorities? How can health system executives strategically decide where to invest in cancer care over the next three to five years?
Dr. Robert Figlin: Cedars Sinai is a horizontally integrated health system, so there are always going to be competing priorities for assets, whether it’s brick-and-mortar assets, research assets or personnel. As a service line, we constantly try to make the case to leadership that the changes that occur in care for cancer patients over the next decade dictate the priorities of what we do today.
What do I mean by that? You just heard from the American Cancer Society that more than 70% of patients survive more than five years with cancer. That means more and more cancer patients are going to become part of our health system whether [as] patients with active cancer, patients who are in remission, patients who are survivors or, for a place like Cedars, people who are at risk and need aggressive screening. It’s important for us to continue to make the case that those competing interests are also aligned with a horizontally integrated system. More cancer patients are developing cardiovascular disease. More cancer patients are developing diseases associated with chronic toxicity and survivorship. These [services] are all going to be required.
Listen to the full conversation here.
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