Many cancer programs continue to face challenges in maintaining access to care given ongoing capacity and resource constraints. This issue will be exacerbated in the future, as projections indicate an additional 11 million patients will be seeking cancer services by 2040 due to the “Silver Tsunami.”
By focusing on core operational imperatives, cancer programs can deliver advanced care and expand access while maintaining a focus on the patient experience. As cancer programs look to the next decade, administrative and clinical leaders will need to implement novel approaches to increase patient access, improve operational efficiency, and ensure equity for all patients.
Across a series of four blog posts, we’re taking a deeper look into each of the pillars foundational to creating a differentiated patient experience, a core element of the cancer program of the future. Part three discussed the various digital health tools organizations are incorporating to support the patient care journey, which you can read here. In the final installment, we will explore why organizations must focus on improving health equity if they want their cancer programs to succeed.
Problem
Although the US has made tremendous progress in treating patients with cancer in recent decades, advances in detection, diagnosis, and treatment have not benefited all populations equally. While cancer incidence rates and mortality are declining steadily across all population groups, disparities throughout the cancer care continuum remain a major public health challenge.
People of color and other medically underserved populations continue to bear a disproportionate burden for cancer when compared to White Americans, as shown by the following statistics:
- American Indian and Alaska Native populations have an 80% higher incidence rate of kidney cancer.
- Individuals living under persistent poverty have a 43.2% higher mortality rate of stomach cancer.
- Individuals living in rural areas have 17% higher death rates from all cancers combined.
- The Black population has more than double the mortality rate of multiple myeloma.
- Over 75% of tumor samples in the Cancer Genome Atlas are from White populations.
- The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders population has nearly three times the mortality rate of stomach cancer.
At a general population level, approximately 40% of cancers are considered preventable, and 60% of patient outcomes are correlated directly with environmental factors and patient behavior—statistics that are closely tied to social determinants of health (SDOH).
KEY SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
While SDOH function upstream from traditional healthcare interventions, they often have an equal or even greater impact on health outcomes for individual patients and communities compared to the provision of healthcare services alone.
Accordingly, providers and programs seeking to improve health equity must adopt a comprehensive view of patients and their communities, looking beyond efforts to merely improve access to care within the clinical setting.
Solution
Cancer centers can begin improving health equity with four practical methods that, when implemented thoughtfully, will help build connections and develop trust within their communities.
Patients and communities want to know that their healthcare providers understand their needs and are committed to empowering individuals to be engaged in both their general healthcare and their cancer are journeys.
Over time, deploying the tactics above will enable cancer centers to improve access to care and build connections to the local community that drive increased patient volumes.
As the demand for high-quality, patient-centric cancer care continues to increase over the next decade, cancer programs must focus on strengthening the four pillars of a differentiated patient experience to continue meeting the needs of their diverse communities, maintain competitive success, and realize programmatic volume growth.
For more information, download our whitepaper, Pioneering a Cancer Program for the Future.
Edited by: Emily Johnson
Published January 10, 2024
