Q: Do you have any advice on how to communicate with patients about the dynamic situation with COVID-19?
Dr. Patt: I think communication has been the biggest lift for us and we've approached it with a kitchen sink approach, sort of, using many different modalities. Email is not great, so we have emailed patients, but also developed a system to systematically text patients, made sure that our patient newsletters and our social media outlets were updated with new posts, made sure our web webpage was continually updated with service offerings, screening guidelines, COVID vaccination availability, to try to make sure that any way that patients were trying to get information, that they would get it, but also recognizing our staffing crisis, trying to make sure that patients simply calling the office to getting information wasn't the predominant mechanism of patients getting information, that we made information dissemination much easier and at their fingertips. So, we actually just before the pandemic had hired a director of communications, and I think that this multimodal approach both to communicate to patients and to staff, my practice has just over 6,000 employees, has been really critical to making sure that we communicate well and are all aligned on the same page.
Q: We at OBR last touched base with you over the summer during the Delta surge. How have the last few months been and what is your outlook going forward?
Dr. Patt: Well, I think the COVID rates are very regional, and so thankfully throughout the United States and most places right now, the rates are very low, but I think that that can always change. We thought we were past this and then most recently the Omicron variant has emerged and people are concerned that we might see a surge in a three to six month timeframe.
So, I think that utilization of what people see as preventative services and screening services, things that aren't truly urgent, frequently they put off during those time periods and while managing the other things that are constrained during those times like if they have children at home that are schooling, or if they're trying to figure out how to remotely work, or maybe they have a caregiver, a loved one who's sick and they're a caregiver, so all of those things I think play a role, but overall, I would say numbers are lower right now. Still, it's not business as usual. There are capacity constraints that limit the number of patients that are in offices, the number of patients that can get screening, and I think it will take us many years before it becomes business as usual.
Q: What are the biggest takeaways when comparing how cancer centers approached things at the start of the pandemic to how things will be managed going forward?
Dr. Patt: I think communication is the biggest lesson, honestly, because I think that the natural consequence of organizations failing to communicate their strategy and their plan effectively is that staff get frustrated and patients get frantic. And so, I think communication really is the key to successfully navigating any complicated landscape before us, and that really is the big takeaway, and then there are the silver linings. I think we all want digital healthcare to behave just in time to provide patients what they need, and the advent of the growth of telemedicine, the policies that are supportive of telemedicine, and electronic patient reported outcomes are always that digital healthcare will provide just in time care delivery to patients where they are. Those are really important things that will keep us delivering great patient care moving forward.
