Tag Archive for: cancer DNA

How Can Prostate Cancer Patients and Providers Help Ensure Quality Care?

How Can Prostate Cancer Patients and Providers Help Ensure Quality Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can prostate cancer patients and providers help ensure quality care? Host Dr. Nicole Rochester asks Dr. Petros Grivas to share insights about available patient resources and ways that providers can help extend improved prostate cancer diagnostics and treatments to patients for better care.

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live


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How Can I Get the Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where I Live?


Transcript:

Dr. Nicole Rochester: 

So, Dr. Grivas, how can we ensure that a patient’s geographic location doesn’t dictate the quality of care that they receive? 

Dr. Grivas: 

A very important question for sure, and I think as you point it out, we have touched upon this before, but I think it is definitely much more to be said and done. More importantly, I think the location has to do with multiple differences in social constructs, right? The location of the distance from a cancer center with expertise is one thing at the time to get to the cancer center is related to that, and also the social support that the patient may have, if for example, a particular treatment, for example, a clinical trial, the requires a weekly visit to the cancer center, is that the feasible thing for the patient who lives miles and miles away in the rural areas of Oklahoma or somewhere else. Can we design clinical trials that are more friendly to these scenarios that require less frequent visits. Can we provide, if possible, funding for housing closer to the cancer center, and there are examples of cancer centers doing that. They provide temporary housing for the patient to be able to be close to the cancer center, so they don’t even worry about going back and forth across the state lines sometimes. 

The other thing, of course, is insurance coverage, and again, this can have some relation to location, and it’s something we have to think about, how can we help our patients who have significant co-pays because of the recommended insurance to that location being supported by foundation or all other funds that the cancer center or the state, or again, other foundations, we have. The other issues about diagnostics and treatments, there has been some interesting discussion about particularly prostate cancer, about access to what we call next generation sequencing, which is a diagnostic test aiming to profile or fingerprint the cancer DNA to look for particular mutations that the cancer may have that may lead to a particular treatment options. 

 If, for example, mutation A is present, can we use a drug X that might be relevant in that context of a mutation and a recent data that was presented at ASCO 2021 showed that if you look at those mutations, they’re not very different between, for example, white and Black patients, there are similar types and frequencies of mutations. What is different is access to the test and, of course, access to the therapy of the test. So, I think we have to do a better job bringing ourselves to the community, extending our opportunities to the patient to get connected with the healthcare system, and they’ll build bridges to bring the patient and closer to the cancer center offering those tests. Work with patient navigation to help patients understand the significant value of the follow-up, but also provide them with a way that there’s equitable access to diagnostics and treatments.