Saratoga Hospital has implemented a new medical program to help cancer patients navigate and coordinate care with the help of a liaison. Neither the liaison nor program is intended to take the place of primary care physicians or specialists.
The Clinical Navigation Program is directed by Emergency Room Nurse Practitioner Kelly Bailey, a cancer survivor herself, having been diagnosed with colon cancer in June 2019.
“It [the cancer diagnosis] kind of makes you stop,” said Bailey. “It’s not what you expect to hear when you wake up from your colonoscopy, especially when you’ve had no symptoms.”
Despite the shock, she wasted no time.
While still in the doctor's office after the colonoscopy, she called her surgeon, scheduled a colectomy for 10 days later, and started chemotherapy a month after the first visit.
“But that’s because I knew what to do. I knew how to drive myself through the system,” she said.
Bailey began receiving phone calls from friends all over the country who had someone they cared for with a cancer diagnosis. Often they just didn’t know where to begin or what to do. While she was going through chemotheraphy herself, Bailey heard story after story about how long it took people to start.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, we can do better than this’,” said Bailey.
She worked on the program proposal during her own recovery and took it to the chief medical officer and president of medical staff, who brought it before the CEO and board of directors. The program started in October.
The program is highly collaborative, coordinating primary care physicians and specialists to get patients to the correct care provider faster and more smoothly. Bailey works with providers to get lab work and preliminary testing done beforehand, so patients are ready to start treatment as soon as possible.
In addition to Bailey, the program team includes a nurse, nurse care manager, medical assistant, patient access specialist, and practice manager, a press release about the program says.
It uses metrics to track timeline success.
“I had hoped to get it down to two months. So far, everyone has come in under 1 month,” said Bailey.
She hopes to get word of the program out to emergency departments and urgent care units.
“Often, people who get a diagnosis through an ER or urgent care event don’t have a primary care physician,” she said. “A lot of stuff is found incidentally in the ER. You’ll get a CAT Scan because you fell down, and they’ll find a mass or something.”
The program also wants to involve primary care physicians as a key collaborator.
“I’m not taking over the primary care of patients,” said Bailey. “You won’t be mine forever.”
Program phone: 518-886-6030, Saratoga Hospital, 119 Lawrence Street in Saratoga Springs.