Specialty Care Demonstration Sites
The Foundation currently funds demonstration projects at several specialty care sites across the country.
AGH – Allegheny General Hospital Breast Care Center, Comprehensive Breast Care Center
The Informed Decision Making (IDM) Program at Allegheny General Hospital is designed to educate newly diagnosed breast cancer patients and help them evaluate their options for treatment before the initial surgical appointment. The primary goals of the program are to enable patients to have an educated dialogue with their breast surgeon, help them engage in high-quality decision-making, and support patients as they carry out these decisions. The health care professionals at the Breast Care Center at Allegheny General Hospital’s Allegheny Cancer Center strongly feel that an IDM program improves patient self-efficacy in decision-making. Data from their patient questionnaires indicate that patients also perceive an improvement in their decision-making abilities after participation in the program activities. For additional information, please contact hgudenbu@wpahs.org or mjeffrie@wpahs.org .
DHMC – Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center – Comprehensive Breast Program
A primary goal of the Comprehensive Breast Program at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is to identify optimal strategies for helping patients make good decisions about their breast cancer care. To achieve this goal, program staff has integrated video-based decision aids into the standard care path of patients with early stage breast cancer. In addition to improving the real-life care of patients with breast cancer, the team has learned a great deal about patient decision-making for the surgical treatment of early stage breast cancer. Recently, the team’s focus has shifted to patients facing decisions about adjuvant treatment and breast reconstruction after mastectomy. For further information regarding this implementation, please contact shared-decision-making@blitz.hitchcock.org .
DHMC – Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center – Prostate Cancer
Clinicians in the sections of Urology and Radiation Oncology at DHMC have focused their efforts on developing a system to ensure that all men newly diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer at DHMC or men visiting DHMC for a second opinion or prostate cancer treatment receive the decision aid “Treatment Choices for Prostate Cancer” prior to their first consultation. The team has successfully integrated this process into the care paths for patients in both urologic oncology and radiation oncology. The team also has worked with staff from Dynamic Clinical Systems to develop a series of customized surveys for patients with newly diagnosed prostate cancer. These surveys allow the counseling clinician to easily assess the knowledge and decisional support needs of the patient. The team is currently in the process of collecting data to assess the distress and decisional conflict experienced by patients newly diagnosed with prostate cancer. The team plans to use these data to compare distress and decisional conflict in newly diagnosed breast and prostate cancer patients. For further information regarding this implementation, please contact shared-decision-making@blitz.hitchcock.org .
UCSF – University of California at San Francisco Breast Care Center
At the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of California San Francisco, researchers are determining the ideal strategies for integrating decision aids, consisting of an informational video and booklet, into the Center’s comprehensive decision support services. For additional information, please contact Jeff Belkora, PhD at jeff.belkora@ucsfmedctr.org .
Please click here to view our Specialty Care Demonstration site for UCSF