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2007 President's Report Probably the biggest “story” for 2007 is the anticipation of the future. In June of this year, the St. Joseph Hospital Governing Board voted to make Cancer Care an extremely high priority. This vote comes with a commitment to increase financial resources to enhance our current Program. While acknowledging that clinical care is excellent, the patient’s perception of care is that it is a partially fragmented system. There is a strong desire to create a seamless program. As one of the Board member’s put it, we want to create a program where the patient “is picked up at the time of first suspicion of cancer, held, and not dropped throughout the continuum of care and into the time of survival.” There are two groups working on the process. One group is responsible for exploring the business models that would help enhance this process. The second group is responsible for identifying the “key elements”, staffing, and programs necessary for bringing this goal of enhanced care to fruition. The Goal of an enhanced Cancer Experience must also include a commitment to excellent cancer outcomes. For the first time this year, we are able to compare our survival data to a network of Cancer Programs throughout the entire United States rather than just the Puget Sound Region. It was highly gratifying to find that our survival data for the major cancer sites is as good, if not better, than the national statistics. One cannot improve unless one measures the current status. In accord with the dedication to Transparency of the Peacehealth System, the Cancer Program is committed to publicly publishing its outcome measurements. Those outcome measurements can be found under quality studies as well as in cancer statistics and survival data. It was gratifying to see how well our physicians and staff perform. So, in summary, we do a great job, but “you ain’t seen nothing yet!” |
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Cancer Services |