2007 Cancer Annual_prod5 - St. Joseph Medical Center

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The Cancer Institute Message from the Medical Director & Vice President Mark Krasna, M.D. Medical Director The Cancer Institute This has been an exciting year for the St. Joseph Cancer Institute. Since my arrival here in September of 2006, we have seen many changes to the face and mission of The Cancer Institute. The new Cancer Institute building has been completed and now occupies over 36,000 square feet of Medical Building A. This brand new, state-ofthe-art facility is the first structure one sees when entering the St. Joseph campus from Osler Drive. The magnificent atrium on the building’s facade is comprised of a two-level glass space which encloses the chemotherapy infusion areas and the waiting room for our comprehensive Breast Center. The ground floor houses Radiation Oncology and a dedicated PET/CT scanner for The Cancer Institute, as well as cancer support services. It also includes all of Cancer Research, as well as the Tumor Registry. Genetic counseling, psychosocial services, nurse navigators and a patient education area are located here as well. A Cancer Boutique and a cafe are scheduled to open in early 2008. The first floor features the Multidisciplinary Clinics, Medical Oncology, physician offices and Cancer Institute executive offices, in addition to the stunning infusion area. The second floor is mainly devoted to The Breast Center and dedicated Breast Imaging Center. As exciting as the new construction is, we are just as proud of the new recruits who have joined us. We are delighted with our new medical oncologists, Drs. Richard Schraeder and Rima Couzi, who are working hand-in-hand with the radiation oncologists and surgeons in The Cancer Institute. To add to the energy, our new cancer surgeons, Drs. Richard Mackey, Robert Akbari and Linda Martin, have all hit the ground running and are demonstrating themselves to be excellent clinicians and cancer team players. Operationalizing our new Multidisciplinary Clinics, PET/CT and Breast Imaging has been an exciting undertaking for our new director of Cancer Services, Monica Fulton, who brought with her experience in managing a community cancer center in the Dana Farber system in Boston. She has met the challenge with vigor and a sense of mission. The Multidisciplinary Clinics and prospective case conferences are the centerpieces of The Cancer Institute. These programs embody the spirit of coordinated care and single out St. Joseph as an institution where collaboration and team planning are focused on what is best for our patients. The synergy of the building and the dedicated staff who work here have come together to ease cancer patients’ journeys from diagnosis through treatment during one of the most difficult times in their lives. Finally, our Tumor Registry and Research staffs have worked tirelessly to open more opportunities for our patients to enter clinical trials. This commitment and dedication have been recognized by our parent organization, CHI – Catholic Health Initiatives – who has established a Catholic Health Oncology Network (CHON) with St. Joseph at the helm. This work has also been recognized by Dr. John Niederhuber and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) who have chosen St. Joseph and four other hospitals in the CHI system as National Community Cancer Center Network Pilot Program participants (NCCCP). This exciting, new initiative will bring research opportunities and new research staff to St. Joseph Cancer Institute patients through the NCI grant. We hope that this coming year is as successful as the past one, and that, as our numbers of patients grow, so will our successful mission of delivering the best, compassionate multidisciplinary care available in our Maryland regional community. Mark Krasna, M.D, Medical Director, The Cancer Institute Lucy Shamash, Vice President, Operations and The Cancer Institute 4 | ST. JOSEPH MEDICAL CENTER sjmcmd.org
The Cancer Institute Cancer Liason Physician Annual Report Maen Farha, M.D. Cancer Liasion Physician The Cancer Institute In some ways, Cancer Liaison Physicians (CLPs) are the guardians of their medical center’s cancer program. Each cancer program in the U.S. that is accredited by the Commission on Cancer is required to have a CLP. It is my honor to be the CLP at St. Joseph Medical Center during the creation of The Cancer Institute. has been implemented for breast cancer, thoracic malignancies and gastrointestinal tumors. The Cancer Liaison Program is a grass-root network of 1,600 physicians volunteers (CLPs) whose primary roles are to: • Serve as the physician champion within the cancer program • Serve as the liaison between CoC and the cancer program • Serve as an agent of change within the community The CoC was founded by the American College of Surgeons in 1922 and has been inspecting hospital cancer programs and approving those that meet its stringent standards. The CoC reviews cancer programs every three years to determine their compliance with its standards. Twenty-five percent of U.S. hospitals are CoC approved, but they collectively care for 80 percent of new cancer patients. MISSION STATEMENT “The Commission on Cancer (CoC) is a consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving survival and quality of life for cancer patients through standard-setting, prevention, research, education and the monitoring of quality care.” St. Joseph Medical Center’s cancer program was reapproved in 2005 and the CoC will be back next spring to evaluate our program. We look forward to that with anticipation because the recent expansion of our cancer program has already begun to bear fruit and is making a difference in cancer patients’ care. One of the most impressive initiatives is the implementation of multidisciplinary prospective Tumor Board. Specialists from multiple disciplines, including many types of non-physician providers, confer to plan the treatment of our cancer patients. The result is always superior to what we can individually accomplish, since many minds come together to share expertise and create a treatment plan that is always rich, intelligent and abundantly detailed for each patient. This This role has been an enriching and positive experience for me. In this capacity during the past year, accomplishments have included: • Reporting regularly to the Cancer Committee including sharing our NCDB data and comparison to national benchmarks • Working closely with tumor registrars and registry to improve the quality and completeness of our reporting • Establishing initial relations with the American Cancer Society and inviting our ACS Liaison to our Cancer Committee meetings • Establishing initial connection with the State Cancer Control program and inviting them to present an overview of the program at our cancer conference • Attending the annual meeting of the CoC at the clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons What is the value of all that data entry to the NCDB and the SEER database? Tumor registrars from the 1,500 or more approved institutions enter extensive data into that database about each patient treated at an institution. To date, 20 million patients are in the database with good solid data on demographics, stage, treatment and survival. This is a massive amount of data that can be “farmed” to answer questions that may otherwise be impossible to answer in a scientific manner. Recent examples are data analysis that showed that having colon resections with larger number of lymph nodes in the specimen confers higher survival rates and that resecting primary tumors in patients with metastatic breast cancer is associated with increased survival. Plus, there have been similarly difficult 2007 THE CANCER INSTITUTE ANNUAL REPORT | 5
Page 1 and 2: 2007 Annual Report | 2006 Statistic
Page 3: “This way, the patient is assured
Page 7 and 8: Cancer Institute Registry Activity
Page 9 and 10: Focus on Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
Page 11 and 12: Table 2 Geographic distribution of
Page 13 and 14: community setting, The Thoracic Onc
Page 15 and 16: treat ever increasing numbers of pa

2007 Cancer Annual_prod5 - St. Joseph Medical Center

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