Next WIHI on May 21: Now What? Best Practices for Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patients

The next WIHI broadcast — Now What? Best Practices for Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patients — will take place on Thursday, May 21, from 2 to 3 PM ET, and I hope you'll tune in.

Our guests will include:

• Leonard L. Berry, PhD, University Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Mays Business School, Texas A&M; IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) Senior Fellow 
• Pat Rutherford, RN, MS, Vice President, IHI 
• Jeffrey Landercasper, MD, FACS, Gundersen Health System 
• Robert Anthony Chapman, MD, Senior Staff Physician, Medical Oncology, Henry Ford Hospital 

When someone is first diagnosed with cancer, those first few days and weeks can be terribly disorienting. Even when health care professionals and staff try to provide clear information about next steps, the person who’s supposed to be taking everything in may be severely distracted. This can be true no matter what type of cancer; but when the news is especially frightening, we can all appreciate why, for some patients, nothing computes. Are there particular ways the health care system can behave, best practices that can be deployed, to ease this initial, hard part of the cancer journey? Yes, say a growing number of cancer treatment providers and patients and observers, which is why we want to touch down with this important topic on the next WIHI on May 21, 2015, at 2:00 PM ET: Now What? Best Practices for Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patients.

We have well-known marketing and health care service expert Leonard Berry to thank for helping us shape and anchor this particular WIHI. Len has spent the past year interviewing more than 350 patients, family members, oncologists, and others to get to the heart of current problems and missteps when it comes to supporting those who are newly diagnosed with cancer. As Len puts it, “A cancer diagnosis is a fireball that turns a patient’s and family’s lives upside down. How can we improve the overall experience? What are the possibilities to ease the path in these first, highly emotional days?”

Fortunately, as Len learned in his exploration, there are a growing number of possibilities and examples to point to. Doctors Jeffrey Landercasper and Robert Chapman are joining this WIHI to talk about the processes being used in their health care systems to provide clearer pathways and solid ground for patients who, upon learning they have cancer, may feel that the bottom has just dropped out. And IHI VP Pat Rutherford will help us consider how this work aligns with emerging efforts to co-create and co-design better care experiences with patients and families.

WIHI host Madge Kaplan is looking forward to this discussion and invites you to bring your knowledge, experience, and curiosity to the program on May 21.

You can enroll for the broadcast here. We'd also appreciate it if you would spread the word about the show via Twitter.