Dr Debra Patt Highlights the High Usage of Digital Health Solutions at Texas Oncology

Digital health care has been a key initiative at Texas Oncology, because it ensures patients can receive better care at their home, explained Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology.

Transcript

Rates of digital health solutions use are high at Texas Oncology based on findings presented at ASCO 2022. What do you attribute this high utilization to?

Well, it's been a key strategic initiative at Texas Oncology, if you think about how we use digital health care to improve the patient journey of cancer care. We've tried to use digital health care to make sure that patients can receive better care at their home. As you know, it's really Texas Oncology's mission to provide innovative and high-quality, affordable cancer care close to home.

So, really, digital health care is right in alignment with Texas Oncology's mission. And we've invested in a partnership with Navigating Cancer, to think about how we work with electronic patient-reported outcomes, to characterize patient's symptoms when they're on active treatment, to systematize patient care pathways when patients call into our triage nurses. And by doing this, by providing digital health solutions, we're able to decrease our response time to patients, we're able to characterize patients' symptoms better.

We think this is better care for patients. And while it's not easy, I think for any practice to adopt new digital health care tools, I think that this is the way of the future. This is how health care continues to innovate and support patients in ways that are easy to use for patients in their homes.