Credit: Sabrina Schaeffer -- The Daily Progress
The hope is that the new approach will allow doctors to be more aware of patients? statuses and the respond faster to problems.
University of Virginia doctors are hoping that a new approach to care for those with advanced cancer will shorten their stays in the hospital and improve the quality of their lives.
?Actually, my father was ill and died of cancer in a hospital,? said Dr. Paul W. Read, a professor of radiation oncology at UVa.
He started thinking about ways to improve treatment.
?The question is how can we provide these patients with the best care, the best quality of life,? Read said.
The hope is that the new approach will allow doctors to be more aware of patients? statuses and the respond faster to problems by combining new software, a team of health care providers and new methods of radiation treatment.
The team will include a wide range of specialists, including palliative care doctors, whose aim is to deal with patients? pain.
Experts plan to build a new computer modeling system to track how patients are doing in categories ranging from pain and weight loss to spiritual wellbeing. The custom software will monitor patients much more closely than off-the-shelf systems do, Read said, and flag medical staff when problems appear. The custom software will be used in conjunction with some already available software.
Symptoms can even be tracked while patients are at home, said Dr. Leslie Blackwell, one of the doctors involved.
Read points to studies that have shown having a palliative care physician in addition to normal treatment can improve outcomes for patients markedly.
?If this was a drug, it would be a multi-billion-dollar drug,? Read said.
Outside experts said that?s a big point.
?Most patients would prefer to be in the comforts of their own home rather than in the hospital, especially at the end of their life,? said Dr. Keri Hall, vice president for quality and medical affairs at the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association.
Dr. Daniel Mendelson, a professor at the University of Rochester and medical director for palliative care at the Highland Hospital in New York had similar thoughts.
?That?s what you have to focus on, living the best you can for whatever time you?ve got,? he said.
On the radiation front, doctors are hoping to refine the ?one big dose equals many small doses? line of thinking to ?one targeted dose equals many small doses.?
The treatment is aimed at those with cancer that has reached the bones. The focus is on reducing the amount of time they have to spend being treated in the hospital along the way.
A 30-minute procedure will replace one that currently lasts weeks, officials hope.
The idea is to be more focused and produce a lot less toxicity, Read said.
?We?re not going to treat someone?s whole stomach to treat someone?s spine,? he said.
The hope is that the new approach will cut the cost of caring for such patients while simultaneously giving them better quality of life.
The Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services is underwriting the new approach with a $2.57 million grant that runs three years. It is expected to create three new jobs.
Read hopes to have the program running at full steam in a year, with kickoff much sooner than that.
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