Resources to optimize cancer center efficiency

Inefficiency in cancer center operations often starts at the very beginning—scheduling. While complex and particularly difficult in oncology, it’s critical to get right.

• Use our Scheduling Improvement Toolkit as an A to Z guide for revamping your scheduling processes, from finding scheduling-related benchmarks to getting the perspective of your frontline staff.
• Evaluate your schedule's performance using multiple factors like appointment availability, duration, and distribution, and learn how Dana Farber and Lehigh Valley have tackled common scheduling challenges.
• Understand key considerations (e.g., centralized vs de-centralized scheduling) for optimizing your unique scheduling process and how to make the most of scheduling templates.
• See how Lehigh hardwired their scheduling process by embedding templates into their EHR for easy access.
• Learn how Stanford partnered with LeanTaas to identify problems in their infusion center scheduling process.
• Make the most of patient’s (and your staff’s) time by hardwiring patient communication and support.
• Utilize data to drive operational changes and adjust scheduling processes to minimize disruption.
• See how your peers are scheduling infusion center patients.
• Develop a rapid access program to reduce the time to first appointment for new patients.
• Learn how Lehigh Valley addressed high infusion center and radiation therapy no-show rates by adding EHR alerts to let providers know when cancer patients were admitted to the hospital.
• Learn how UVA’s cancer program moved from 65 separate phone access points to a single, centralized call line.

Optimize your staffing structure to accommodate growing workloads and escalating treatment complexity.

Ensure top-of-license practice

• Learn how your peers are using advanced practitioners (APs)—and what you can do to keep them on your team.
• Find out how to use allied health professionals to off-load tasks from your oncologists and nurses.
• Read how your peers are leveraging LPNs, CNAs, and MAs.
• Make sure you’re using oncology pharmacists to do more than just dispensing drugs.
• Expand the pharmacist role to augment provider capacity.
• Learn how to improve genetic counselor efficiency and bandwidth.
• See how Dignity Health used a cancer risk assessment platform to maximize genetic counseling staff efficiencies.
• Find opportunities for automation so your care team can spend more time with patients and on high-value tasks.
• Use telehealth to improve patient self-management and for other use cases to increase provider and staff bandwidth.
• Create a scope-of-practice matrix like Gundersen's to clearly define top-of-license responsibilities for each member of the care team.
• Also see Gundersen's full scope-of-practice matrix for a list of patient care roles and responsibilities.
• Calculate the time and money a lay navigator could save your organization by freeing up provider time.
• Better manage clinical trial patients with efficient nursing workflow.
• See how your peers are managing infusion center nurse staffing ratios.

Take acuity into account

• Use our Acuity-Based Infusion Center Staffing Tool to identify patterns in patient volumes, scheduling, and acuity; analyze staffing levels; and collect data to support changes in nurse staffing.
• Learn from our Three-Step Cancer Staffing Makeover how one organization developed an infusion acuity scale and leveraged it to balance staffing supply and demand in the infusion center.

Invest in building a talent pipeline

• See how one organization developed long-term strategies for creating internal staffing pipelines to combat chronic shortages of key positions.
• Create an oncology rotation program like Frederick Regional to give non-oncology staff exposure to the specialty and create potential cancer center candidates.
• See how a nurse mentoring program can ensure you always have candidates for hard-to-fill openings for oncology-trained RNs.

No matter how good your staffing model or scheduling processes, with all the various moving parts of a cancer center, there can still be unexpected breakdowns causing delays in patient care.

Standardize the cancer patient journey

• Learn how to standardize personal patient touchpoints before treatment starts.
• Read our Process Improvement Playbook to learn six key steps for process improvement in your cancer center.
• Create comprehensive care pathways to standardize patient care across the continuum.

Don't neglect the physical layout and flow of your cancer center

• See how Park Nicollet designed their new cancer center with patient-centric service flow in mind.
• Download the slides from our webinar, "How to Design a Better Cancer Care Facility," to understand how your facility's design can support care team workflow and meet patient expectations.
• Check out our one-pager Four Tips to Build a Better Wayfinding System.
• Browse our Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Resources page to help you take a principled approach to implementing RTLS.
• Learn how your peers are redesigning their medical oncology clinics.

Streamline the diagnostic process

• Learn how to dig out of Covid-19 cancer screening backlogs.
• See how Renown’s Intake Oncology Coordinator Clinic improves the diagnostic process.
• Learn how OhioHealth's dedicated diagnostic breast health nurse navigator reduces time to diagnosis.
• Read about the expedited diagnosis clinic Memorial Hospital developed to provide immediate follow-up to patients with lung nodules identified during their chest scans.
• Read how Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital’s rapid access diagnostic clinic shortened the diagnostic process for cancer patients and diagnosed cancers at earlier stages.
• Learn how to use natural language processing to improve patient transition from diagnosis to the cancer center.
• See how this organization embedded a navigator in their endoscopy suite to improve patient capture and volumes.

Identify opportunities to collaborate and ensure smooth care transitions across the continuum

• Learn how Montefiore Medical Center uses an EHR-supported nurse navigation tool to improve time to treatment.
• Leverage specialist care team members to increase the core care team’s capacity.
• Review five practices for coordinating transitions with the cancer care team.
• Read three practices for ensuring smooth ED transitions.
• Check out these three models to improve the transition between inpatient and outpatient care—and these additional six practices.
• Learn four practices for developing collaborative hospice relationships.
• Schedule all eligible patients for survivorship appointments automatically with EHR triggers.

Redesign infusion center workflows

• Use our Oncology Lab Options Assessment to evaluate some of the more effective solutions hospitals have adopted to ensure timely processing of labs for infusion patients.
• Learn how to effectively integrate ancillary services into infusion center workflows.
• See how your peers are using in-house lab and pharmacy to drive patient throughput.
• Learn how Lehigh Valley employs flow nurses in the infusion center to ensure that any unexpected events will have a minimal impact—and check out the job description for this unique role.
• See how a drug order readiness campaign allowed Nebraska Medical to increase the number of complete and available orders at the time of patients’ infusion appointments.
• Use rapid infusion protocols to save hundreds of hours of infusion time.
• Learn how your infusion center hours of operation, throughput, and utilization compares to your peers.
• Use pre-chemo blood draws to maximize throughput.

Redesign medical oncology clinic workflows

• See how Artesa standardized supplies in exam rooms to maximize provider time spent with patients.

Redesign radiation therapy workflows

• Learn how to hardwire use of hypofractionation into clinical practice.