Nearly one year after its opening, Charleston Area Medical Center's Cancer Center is working to expand its support services for cancer patients, but the hospital will need to work in the coming months to replace four of its outgoing oncologists, hospital administrators told the CAMC Board of Directors on Wednesday.
Jeff Goode, vice president of ambulatory services for CAMC, told board members Wednesday that programs like the cancer center's nurse navigator program, which allows patients to receive individual attention from a trained oncology nurse navigator, and its Comprehensive Assistance to Resource and Education Program will help make the center more competitive on a national scale.
"If we're going to be a top-tier cancer program, these are the types of services you have to have in place, and you have to have them in an interdisciplinary, comprehensive manner on-site," Goode said. "We've been able to make good progress over the least year with these types of programs."
Currently, the cancer center has 90 staff members, with seven physicians, Goode said. A new physician has already agreed to join the cancer center in the summer, Goode said, and the hospital system has more interviews scheduled in the coming months.
"We are very focused on getting to 10 physicians and maintaining 10 physicians," he said. "We have spent a considerable amount of time thinking through how to not only attract the best talent, but to retain talent. We are confident we can recruit; the key now is retention."
Goode said the center is also working to reduce its wait for new appointments, which currently averages more than 10 days. The center is an active cancer research site, Goode said, and currently has more than 300 patients enrolled in 30 different treatment protocols.
"We are also focusing on our multidisciplinary care team; the ability now, with the building and the specialty providers we have in the community, to continue to coordinate care better, and to bring all of the resources to the individual as soon as possible after they receive a diagnosis," he said.
Larry Hudson, chief financial officer for CAMC, told board members that revenue was up for both the month and the year-to-date, thanks to a shift in the number of patients with commercial insurance. Hudson also noted that emergency department visits were up by more than 1,000 over the prior year, and that nearly all of those visits occurred during March.
"Of course, you get a lot of readmissions out of your [emergency department] visits," Hudson said. "We were up 110 [in readmissions] over the previous year - a conversion rate of 10 percent."
CAMC President and CEO Dave Ramsey said the hospital system received a letter from the state's Medicaid program a couple of days ago warning that the program would not be able to reimburse the hospital at the same level it has, likely due to continued budget struggles at the state level.
"We're hopeful it doesn't last too long," Ramsey said. "We're worried for ourselves certainly, but more importantly, for hospitals around us that don't have the cash reserves that our organization has. Hopefully this will be a short-term issue that will be resolved once they can get the budget situated at the state level so that there isn't any harm done to institutions."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5189 or follow
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