Premier Health’s Membership in MD Anderson Cancer Network® Takes Care to a Higher Level

	By Charles Bane, MD, chair of Premier Health Cancer Institute
	By James Ouellette, DO, vice chair of Premier Health Cancer Institute

The Premier Health Cancer Institute is continuing its work to strengthen the entire spectrum of cancer care across our region. As such, Premier Health is a proud member of MD Anderson Cancer Network®, a program of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

While we’ve been a member of the network for more than two years, we continue to hear confusion about the benefits of this relationship for our physicians and our patients. Here are some talking points you can use when discussing the benefits of our MD Anderson affiliation:

Certified member – Premier Health is the only certified member of MD Anderson Cancer Network® in Southwest Ohio.

Peer-to-peer consultation – Through peer-to-peer consults, physician-to-physician collaboration takes place between Premier Health and MD Anderson to continually advance cancer care and to help patients receive highly personalized treatment. Over the past year, Premier Health has increased peer-to-peer consults by 27 percent.

World-class care close to home – MD Anderson Cancer Center is ranked as the top cancer hospital in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, and is one of the nation’s original three comprehensive cancer centers.

Continuous performance improvement – MD Anderson Cancer Network® is a quality excellence program of MD Anderson Cancer Center that is designed to advance the institution’s mission of eliminating cancer by delivering MD Anderson expertise to community health providers. Preliminary results for Premier Health show continuous performance improvement with the help of MD Anderson through ongoing concordance studies and action plans.

Multidisciplinary team – Premier Health physicians participate in weekly tumor board meetings. These meetings happen both locally and across the entire MD Anderson Cancer Network®. In these meetings, our physicians present cases and receive multidisciplinary treatment advice.

Improved access to best practices – As a certified member of MD Anderson Cancer Network®, Premier Health and its associated cancer specialists have access to MD Anderson’s clinical guidelines, best practices, and protocols.

Local care – Our local cancer specialists continue to provide care while being supported by access to world-renowned cancer expertise.

In addition to our membership in MD Anderson Cancer Network®, the Premier Health Cancer Institute continues to focus on several other quality improvement initiatives. We will share information about progress in these initiatives in coming months.

If you have questions about our MD Anderson affiliation and how it can benefit you and your patients, please feel free to call Lori Scalise, interim vice president of service integration–oncology, at (937) 499-9140 for more information.

Save the Date for Cancer Programs

The Premier Health Cancer Institute is developing an educational event series that will feature programs held across the region. Programs focused on breast cancer education will take place at Atrium Medical Center on Thursday, September 13, and at Upper Valley Medical Center on Wednesday, September 19.

A separate educational program will occur in Dayton at the Dayton Masonic Center on Saturday, October 27. This program will focus on advances in treatment of melanoma, and will include a special presentation about advancements in immunotherapy by a presenter from MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Please mark your calendars for these programs. More information will be sent out about each program in coming months. 

Back to the June 2018 issue of Premier Pulse