Ramy Sedhom: Lessons from ASCO Palliative Care Communities of Practice chat with Eduardo Bruera on “How to Build a Clinical Palliative Care Program”.

Quoting Ramy Sedhom, Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician at Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, on X/Twitter:

“Lessons from ASCO Palliative Care Communities of Practice chat with Eduardo Bruera on “How to Build a Clinical Palliative Care Program”.

1. Name change to Supportive Care increases referrals.

2. Endorse early PC – think of Goals of CAR(e) i.e. planning for the future.

3. Needs-based criteria are better than time-based referrals (by the way patients agree about this when surveyed).

4. Be available & meet the patient where they are needed. Amazing that the Palliative Care Team at The MD Anderson Cancer Care Center trains their schedulers, front desk how to attend to emotional symptoms of advanced illness And that walk-in visits are accommodated for Palliative Care.

5. Embrace telemedicine. It improves access, decreases cancelations, uses integrative team in novel ways.

6. Palliative Care works when there is a RELATIONSHIP with oncologists. Automated criteria, absent of what the individual patient needs doesn’t work. They must be invited to take part in care.

7. Focus on metrics that matter. i.e. Do you meet what the patient and family needs? Do you meet what the oncologist needs? Do not focus on the penetration rate.

extra (from Q&A) —
“Epic is the Cartel.”
“Do not wait for epic to measure things for you. For $600 million dollars, they cannot produce a bar-graph.”

Source: Ramy Sedhom/Twitter.