Creating healthcare access is not about “squeezing the existing structure,” rather, it requires flipping the script on what access looks like, according to Jefferson Health President Baligh Yehia, MD.
Jefferson Health is a Philadelphia-based, 33-hospital system with a lofty goal.
“When we look at healthcare across the country today, access and affordability continue to be topics that are discussed around the dinner table,” Dr. Yehia told Becker’s. “So for us, access has been top of mind all along, and access to all kinds of different types of care, including cancer care. That’s why we [set] a goal, a bold goal, that we want to be the most accessible healthcare system in the country.”
One of Jefferson Health’s strategies to rapidly expand healthcare access is through oncology care. At an emergency department or primary care clinic, a clinician might tell a patient something looks suspicious and speculates it could be cancer. That word alone can send patients into a spiral, even when the potential diagnosis is a low-risk condition or disease.
In July 2024, Jefferson debuted the Same Day/Next Day Cancer Care program, which virtually connects patients with an advanced care provider within 24 to 48 hours — a significant difference from the traditional model of waiting weeks for an in-person appointment.
“Our goal is to meet patients in the moment they need care, not weeks later,” Dr. Yehia said. “You don’t want to be sitting in uncertainty for weeks when … someone says you might have cancer or that there’s something that looks suspicious.”
He said the program expedites follow-ups, facilitates care coordination and unburdens the emergency department. For example, after hearing a clinician’s remark about a suspicious-looking lesion, patients might not know which specialist to contact and turn to the already-crowded ED. The program is tailored for all cancer types and can quickly match patients with an appropriate specialist, who can then order the right tests sooner.
Since its launch, Same Day/Next Day Cancer Care has racked up more than 2,000 appointments, and about 10% of new medical appointments at the system are funneled to this program.
The initiative has achieved shorter time to clinical intervention, such as surgery, Dr. Yehia said. Other benefits include increased enrollment in clinical trials and earlier detection — and intervention — of social and economic barriers to treatment.
Dr. Yehia said the advanced care providers in the program “help shepherd an individual through their journey,” and as a result, Jefferson is recording improved clinical outcomes, reduced anxiety among patients and less care fragmentation.
Based on its success, Jefferson is crafting a blueprint for similar programs in other service lines, including hepatology, dermatology, neurology and neurosurgery. It has already launched Same Day/Next Day models for transplant evaluations and primary care.
Each program is personalized to the service line, but invention is foundational.
For the cancer care program, “we created a structure above the clinics, which was this virtual model that included hiring specific advanced care practitioners, and they kind of sat above the clinics, and then were able to kind of get folks to the right places,” Dr. Yehia said.
“So it isn’t about squeezing more into the existing structure. Sometimes that works, but [for] the most part, folks are very efficient in the clinics. It’s really thinking differently about access,” he said. “It’s not asking to just push more through your normal process. You really have to redesign it altogether.”
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