Spotlighting the Critical Role of Supportive Care in Cancer Treatment

Andrew Leitner, MD, pain management physician and chair of the department of supportive care medicine at City of Hope, summarizes key points from his presentation, "Filling the Unmet Need for Supportive Care," delivered at the Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® (IVBM) event held in Garden Grove, California in partnership with City of Hope. He also lists his biggest takeaways from the event.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Transcript

Can you summarize the key points from your presentation, "Filling the Unmet Need for Supportive Care"?

When we talk about filling the unmet need, we have to look at the entire patient journey from a cancer diagnosis through treatment. Supportive care is a treatment approach and a collection of services and programs that look at the patient's journey through quality of life, patients' functioning, dignity, and everything that they go through to get to and through cancer treatment in all aspects and, really, from a needs basis.

Whether they be physical needs, spiritual, psychological, or emotional. Practical needs, how do they get to appointments? Social needs, what's the social fabric, and what type of support are patients in need of? Even care planning, how to navigate the health care system, and how to make plans that are aligned with their goals and preferences.

What were your biggest takeaways from the IVBM event?

I thought the IVBM event was a great showcase of how the diverse activities at a comprehensive cancer center can come to bear to drive value, and by value, as we increasingly define it, in the eyes of the patient and what patients find most important.

It was great to listen to colleagues describe the advances made in a number of domains and getting patients access to the type of treatments and the type of comprehensive and holistic care that is provided through these comprehensive cancer centers.

Increasingly, we have more tools to get get patients access, whether it's through telehealth, digital care, or predictive modeling, there's increasing ability for us to take scarce resources and map it out towards a broader patient population. So, a lot of optimism but also a lot of work ahead of us to continuously drive value and, just as important, demonstrate value for all of the stakeholders.