Tag Archive for: telemedicine

Will Telemedicine Be a Mainstay for Myeloma Patients After the Pandemic?

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The Patient Empowerment Network (PEN) is fostering change toward achieving equitable healthcare for all. One resource, the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center is to significantly improve multiple myeloma patients’ and caregivers’ familiarity with remote access to healthcare, and thus increase quality of care regardless of geographical location. This one-of-a-kind resource center is intended to educate the myeloma community on the practical usage of telemedicine tools, to humanize patient and provider experiences.

Here’s a summary view of the knowledge gained about telemedicine to help provide optimal care to myeloma patients and to aid in receiving optimal care no matter virus limitations, where patients live, and other factors.

Benefits and Limitations of Telemedicine Visits

There are both benefits and limitations of telemedicine visits. Some benefits of telehealth include:

  • Telemedicine allows care providers the opportunity to determine when myeloma patients really need to be seen in-person.
  • Standard of care and maintenance treatment are usually a good fit for using some telemedicine visits in clinical trials.
  • The option to get laboratory work done closer to home is a benefit for saving travel time and from taking time off of work and also lessens patient exposure to viruses.
  • Telehealth allows care providers the opportunity to meet family members of some patients who can’t make it to in-person visits and to get to know their patients on a more personal level.
  • Care providers are now able to provide second opinions to patients in other parts of their state and even to some patients across the country.

Unfortunately, some limitations of telehealth include:

  • Gauging toxicity and other things with new treatments are usually best done along with performing a physical exam.
  • Some patients only have technology access to talk over the phone and don’t have access to use video due to their device or due to lack of Wi-Fi bandwidth.
  • Physical examinations cannot be performed via telehealth visits.
  • Some providers feel it’s more difficult to establish a bond with some patients and to have considerable discussions with then over telemedicine.
  • Open and honest communication between patients and care providers is sometimes better served in-person.

How to Optimize a Telemedicine Visit

 Just like in-person care visits, telemedicine visits are scheduled with a time limit in mind. Some things to remember about telemedicine visits are:

  • Try to write down your questions for your doctor or care provider before your appointment to keep on track. Keep it next to you for easy access during your visit.
  • If patients normally have a friend or loved one join or doctors have a nurse or pharmacist join for in-person visits, have them join your telemedicine visits to help take notes, to ask questions, and/or to provide answers or additional information.
  • If a video conferencing tool is needed for your visit, install the tool on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone ahead of time to prevent rushing before your appointment. If possible, try to test the video conferencing tool with a friend or loved one a day or so ahead of your appointment.
  • If there’s anything you don’t understand during the appointment, ask your doctor to explain it again – whether it’s medication instructions, test results, a new medical term, or anything else.
  • If you feel like a treatment isn’t working well for you, ask your doctor about possible medication or dosage changes.
  • Just like in-person doctor visits, your doctor or care provider may run a few minutes late. Try your best to remain flexible and to be patient.

Telemedicine and Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials

To the surprise of some, telemedicine has taken a role in multiple myeloma clinical trials. Currently, and looking to the future, patients can expect:

  • Telemedicine to continue as an option for follow-up visits along with in-person visits in clinical trials.
  • Paperwork for clinical trials to be available to complete online for an easier process for joining clinical trials.
  • Multiple myeloma clinical trials to provide optimal care through the use of both telemedicine and in-person visits.
  • Telemedicine to provide more options for clinical trial access for those who live in remote areas.
  • Multiple myeloma clinical trials for quality-of-life studies, engagement studies, educational studies, and possibly others to be available via telemedicine. 

Financial Benefits of Telemedicine 

Telemedicine has brought some financial benefits for multiple myeloma patients, including:

  • Telemedicine saves the time and costs of traveling to appointments and can reduce or sometimes eliminate the need to take time off from work for an appointment.
  • The option of connecting with your doctor via telemedicine can sometimes eliminate the need for costly urgent care visits.
  • The use of telemedicine eliminates the need to find child care for patients and care partners with young children who couldn’t take them along to in-person doctor appointments.

Telemedicine Glossary

Here are some helpful telemedicine terms to know:

  • HIPAA – HIPAA, or the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, is a healthcare compliance law providing data security and privacy for the safeguarding of patient medical information. In telemedicine, provider-patient communication must take place through HIPAA-compliant secure platforms.
  • Patient portal – a secure Internet sign-on that allows patients to contact their provider, review medical tests and records, access health education materials, and seek appointments. Most provider networks develop a patient portal before they move to full video appointments.
  • Remote monitoring – type of ambulatory healthcare where patients use mobile medical devices to perform a routine test and send the test data to a healthcare professional in real-time.
  • VPN – a VPN, or virtual private network, is a secure and private way to connect to the Internet over public wireless connections. VPNs are particularly important for those living the digital nomad lifestyle and connecting in foreign countries where networks may be more vulnerable to communication transmission interference.

Now that telemedicine tools continue to increase in use and to be refined, multiple myeloma patients can feel hopeful about improved care and treatment ahead for patients. As a step in that direction, take advantage of the resources below and continue to visit the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center for informative content about multiple myeloma and telemedicine.

Resources for Telemedicine and Multiple Myeloma

Are There Limitations of Telemedicine for Multiple Myeloma Patients?

How Will the Pandemic Impact Multiple Myeloma Trials?

Is Telemedicine Here to Stay for Multiple Myeloma Care?

 What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Myeloma Patients?

How to Make the Most of a Virtual Visit

Telemedicine & Second Opinion Options

What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine?

How Can Myeloma Patients Reduce Infection Risks During Medical Appointments?

Financial Resources for Patients and Families

 Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Myeloma Patients?

 Will Telemedicine Be a Long-Term Survival Tool for Myeloma Patients?

How Will Telemedicine Impact Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials?

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How Will Telemedicine Impact Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

What impact has telemedicine had on multiple myeloma clinical trials, and what effect will it have on trials in the future? Expert Dr. Joseph Mikhael explains the impact of telemedicine early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, how he uses virtual visits with his patients currently, and the role and benefits of telehealth in the future of myeloma care.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Are There Any Barriers for Multiple Myeloma Patients Using Telemedicine?

Will Telemedicine Be an Advantage for Multiple Myeloma Patients?

What Multiple Myeloma Populations Will Benefit from Telemedicine?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Joseph Mikhael:

COVID-19 has impacted our lives in just about every way imaginable, and in multiple myeloma, sadly has very much impacted our ability to conduct clinical trials. Thankfully, now that we are out of the immediate acute phase when many trials were suspended, we actually have been able to work around this in general, where now we’ve been able to re-introduce studies and bring in new studies, of course, and we can do so in a more careful manner. Many of our clinical trials now are allowing intermittently to have telemedicine visits, which reduces the traffic for patients and makes it a little bit smoother. Some of the questionnaires and the things that we used to have to fill out on paper or physically in-person now can be done electronically, and so I think in many respects, we’ve really overcome most of the barriers so that we can continue the outstanding work and clinical trials to provide options for our patients that were not available before.

And looking to the future, I hope, even paradoxically in some way that this may — now that we’ve developed a more sophisticated telemedicine platform — it may allow us to do more and perhaps reach patients that may not have been reached before, there are already studies and trials that are being done through telemedicine, not necessarily a drug trial but quality of life studies, engagement studies, educational studies, different ways that we can enhance a patient’s experience and investigate better ways of doing things now that we can do so more fully electronically.

So, when I think of telemedicine and the future in multiple myeloma, I think it will continue to have a role in the long term. I think, much like people think that there will be more virtual meetings, I think we all want to get back to in-person meetings of various types and sizes and shapes, there will always be a component of virtual, and I can think even in my own practice and some patients that have quite a long drive to come down to see me, that they will still have to have face-to-face visits, but intermittently when the things are going well, follow-up like visits where the discussion may be limited.

I think there will be a role for this so that we can leverage the best of telemedicine and the best of in-person medicine so that the patients can receive the best care possible.

What Multiple Myeloma Populations Will Benefit From Telemedicine?

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What Multiple Myeloma Populations Will Benefit Most From Telemedicine? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

Which multiple myeloma patients will benefit most from telemedicine visits, and which patients can get more from in-person visits? Dr. Joseph Mikhael shares information on how to ensure the best myeloma care even during pandemic restrictions and how in-person visits have adjusted to limit COVID exposure risk.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Are There Any Barriers for Multiple Myeloma Patients Using Telemedicine?

What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine?

How Will Telemedicine Impact Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Joseph Mikhael:

When it comes to making a decision around, do I need to go into the clinic or can I do this as a telemedicine visit, of course, that has to be discussed with the healthcare team, but a few things we’ve learned through this pandemic.

And perhaps one of the most important things we’ve learned through the pandemic is that controlling one’s disease, controlling one’s myeloma is critical to protecting people against COVID, sadly, many of our patients who have struggled the most with COVID are those who had very active myeloma. So, we emphasize the importance of making sure that one continues to receive the best myeloma care possible, and very often that is going to involve an in-person visit, not only for discussion, but, of course, for the actual receiving of treatment. Secondly, I think it’s very important for us to note that we really have not seen significant spread of COVID or almost any infection within our hematology-oncology clinics, we’ve taken particular precaution around this area. So, this is different than someone maybe going out to a more public place where the risks may be higher. And so, we try to reassure our patients that coming into clinic actually is really not a high-risk situation and, in fact, perhaps lower risk than ever in light of the fact that many of our waiting areas and places where we have patients have been restructured and have fewer patients because of telemedicine visits.

And then thirdly, and very importantly, whether it’s telemedicine or in-person, it’s really important to maintain open, honest, and clear communication with the healthcare team. And if that is felt that it’s being done to a certain extent in telemedicine, fantastic, but there are situations where it’s challenging and difficult and really must be face-to-face. And so I would want to encourage my patients not to be afraid to go in to receive treatment and to meet with their healthcare team. These are generally very safe places that we take special precautions to ensure their patients can receive the best care possible.

Are There Any Barriers for Multiple Myeloma Patients Using Telemedicine?

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Are There Any Barriers For Multiple Myeloma Patients Using Telemedicine? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

Along with all the benefits of multiple myeloma care via telemedicine, there are some obstacles that providers run into as well. Myeloma expert Dr. Joseph Mikhael details his experience with telehealth barriers in caring for his patients.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Will Telemedicine Be an Advantage for Multiple Myeloma Patients?

What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine?

How Will Telemedicine Impact Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Joseph Mikhael:

So there are several limitations to telemedicine, despite better technology and camera strength and Wi-Fi, and we’re removing all those distractions, it really is limited by not being able to physically be present with a patient, which means we can’t examine patients, which means we can’t hug our patients, I’m a hugger as an oncologist, I like to get close to my patients, and then of course, there are those things that don’t always convey themselves easily over a camera or a computer.

The emotion in the room, the tension, the fear, many of my patients experience fear being cancer patients, and so telemedicine can be very helpful when we have more straightforward follow-ups and questions, but initially building a bond with the patient and having very considerable discussions about one’s treatment and on symptoms, it is always going to be limited in a telemedicine capacity

What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine?

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What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

What are some ways that patients and providers can make the most of multiple myeloma telemedicine visits? Dr. Joseph Mikhael shares things that he has found helpful in interacting via telehealth visits with his patients and how he tries to approach different types of visits.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Will Telemedicine Be an Advantage for Multiple Myeloma Patients?

What Multiple Myeloma Populations Will Benefit from Telemedicine?

How Will Telemedicine Impact Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trials?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Joseph Mikhael:

Well, the best practices for telemedicine are really going to depend on the nature of the clinic, the way the provider likes to interact with their patients, and the way the patients like to interact with them. I think one of the beauties of the multiple platforms we have is that we can leverage them, that beautiful connection that we develop between a physician or a provider and their patient, we can continue obviously not to the same extent that using electronic means, and so I’ve really tried to make sure that I don’t look at this as a half visit or as a partial visit.

I think psychologically is my first important tip that we look at this as another very important physician-patient interaction. Secondly, I try to make sure that my patients are comfortable with this modality, that we’ve had time to work through the technology, so we’re not worrying about who’s on mute, who’s not on mute, so that when we discuss things, we can discuss things properly, and that thirdly, we as much as possible, try to engage a full visit, whether a family member is going to be with the patient, whether a nurse practitioner, a nurse or pharmacist is going to join me on this side, that we really try to reproduce what we know works well in the clinic.

So, that the patient can feel comfortable so that they can be heard, because sometimes it’s difficult when you’re on the other side of a computer or phone to really be heard.

So psychologically, being prepared for this and getting into the specifics of making sure we’re comfortable with the technology, and then thirdly, really as much as possible, trying to reproduce that magic that we feel like when we have a face-to-face interaction.

Will Telemedicine Be an Advantage for Multiple Myeloma Patients?

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Will Telemedicine Be An Advantage for Multiple Myeloma Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

With the rise of telemedicine into multiple myeloma care options, unforeseen benefits have occurred along with those that are well-documented. Dr. Joseph Mikhael shares what he’s experienced in caring for his patients.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

What Are Best Practices for Multiple Myeloma Patients Utilizing Telemedicine?

Are There Any Barriers for Multiple Myeloma Patients Using Telemedicine?

What Multiple Myeloma Populations Will Benefit from Telemedicine?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Joseph Mikhael:

The pandemic, both in the short term and the long term has really revolutionized much of what we’re doing in medicine, telemedicine is one of those areas. It’s, despite all the challenges that we faced of social isolation, it really has given us an opportunity to not only see patients who we may not have already seen but also allow us to develop a relationship with patients where we can determine when is it best and needed truly to be seen in-person. And when can we do visits by telemedicine, allowing the patient to have less travel time and the challenges of coming to the clinic and allowing us to keep our clinics limited to those patients that genuinely need to be seen face-to-face. So it’s really now been a wonderful adjunct to the way we care for patients, doing so continuously in a human fashion, but also leveraging the technology and that we can use for this.

Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit

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Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

What are some ways that prostate cancer patients can prepare for telemedicine visits? Dr. Leanne Burnham shares her top tips for ensuring success and for getting the most out of televisit appointments.

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

What Prostate Cancer Populations Will Benefit Most From Telemedicine?

How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials?

What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

Okay, my top three tips to prepare for a telemedicine visit is if you would usually have an advocate come with you to your in-person doctor’s appointment, try to make that happen for your televisit appointment as well. And explain to your physician when you get on the call say, “Hey, this is my wife, this is my husband, and they’re going to be joining the call if they have a few questions too, and I would like to have them be involved as part of the conversation.” The other thing is to have your questions prepared ahead of time, you know, and a lot of people have questions prepared ahead of time for in-person visits, but they might be nervous, they might keep their questions tucked away, well, this way your questions can be on the table next to you. Your doctor doesn’t even know, you still get to ask those questions though, and then the third tip that I would have is to allow for technology to mess up. So, for your visits, a lot of times your physician may give you a window where they say, “We’re going to call you between such and such time,” such as such time, you just sitting there waiting for them to call. But I say give yourself even more time than that in case you know something’s going on with your Internet or you are just not able to log into the app well, because I did have that happen to me personally, one time with the physician, and they were trying to get ahold of me, and I was having trouble connecting, and then he emailed me later saying, “You missed our appointment.”

I really wasn’t trying to miss the appointment, so just give yourself that extra time to get your technology together.

How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials?

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How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

How will prostate cancer clinical trials be changed by the addition of telemedicine to the treatment toolbox? Expert Dr. Leanne Burnham details patients who can benefit from telemedicine visits — and explains some of the history of discrimination in medical care for BIPOC patients and treatment response of African American men with prostate cancer

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients?

What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So clinical trials, the whole concept of clinical trials has really come to the forefront of the media right now with everything that’s happened in 2020 and currently with COVID.

And so a lot of people, if they were not aware of discrimination in medical care or clinical trials in the history of the U.S., then now they’re starting to become well-versed in it. So now people are hearing, “Oh, Tuskegee syphilis experiment,” where those of us who are in science, in medicine study health series research is, this is not new to us, so we’re grateful that it’s coming to the forefront. People are learning about it, but there is a justifiable medical mistrust by many Black and Brown people, but African Americans in particular, because of what has been done and not done in terms of medical treatment in the past 400 years. And so, because of this medical mistrust, that leads to sometimes a hesitancy to participate in clinical trials, because there’s an idea of, I don’t want to be a guinea pig, so that’s just one aspect that leads to less enrollment in clinical trials. There’s the whole other side of things, right? There’s the fact that a lot of African American patients are not asked to be in a clinical trial, they’re not explained what the clinical trial entails, a lot of people don’t realize that clinical trial patients have access to what I call what I consider to be VIP access to what is cutting-edge, and it doesn’t mean that it’s not new, that it hasn’t been tested extensively. It’s just now that it’s available to a patient at a particular disease stage that we might be looking at, and we have a lot of reason to believe that it will help that patient.

So a patient that’s enrolling in a clinical trial has access to the VIP treatment. And then as an added bonus, they actually have extra engagement with providers, extra touchpoints with their providers that patients that are receiving standard of care and not enrolled in a clinical trial don’t have as much access to. That being said, in addition to that, for us to really forward medicine in what we call precision medicine, which is able to have medication that’s tailored to an individual person based on their DNA makeup, based on how their body would individually respond to a drug. It’s super important, highly important that we have diversity in patients that are enrolled in clinical trials. For example, if you don’t have enough African American men enrolled in the clinical trial for prostate cancer, then you don’t really know if that medication would work worse or even better in that patient. And what we’re actually seeing is there has been a development of race-stratified clinical trials in the past less than 10 years, really around five years, where we’ve looked at chemotherapy, we looked at hormone therapy, and we looked at immunotherapy, where we include enough African American men in the trials, and we look at how the drug responds in African American men versus other men. And we see that African American men actually have a better treatment response than other races, so how amazing is that? Where you have a demographic that is more likely to get aggressive prostate cancer and die much younger, and we’re seeing that if they’re given the new treatments that are really tailored to target the disease in ways that we weren’t able to do it before, that they’re responding better and having longer survival and better outcomes. And so it’s really important for all those reasons I described to increase African American participation in clinical trials.

Now, I say all that to get to this point, which is, enrollment is not easy when you don’t live near a clinical trial center or a hospital that’s offering whatever treatment you’re interested in trying out as part of a trial. And so we know that race in this country is tied to geographic location, it’s tied to socio-economic status, and so what telemedicine provides is in previous instances where maybe a patient lives out the way 60 miles or more from an institution that has a clinical trial that they would want to be involved in, now they don’t have to drive to that center. They can have a telemedicine visit, they can conduct labs where they’re at near their home, see if they qualify to participate in the clinical trial based on their own body’s physiology and how their blood work comes out and how their imaging comes out, see if they qualify. And then they can enroll in that clinical trial, and so telemedicine in that aspect really opens the door to people who may have been interested who live out of the way, maybe even in a rural setting where the institutions that they have nearby, don’t have what they are interested in using or what may be best for their treatment plan personally, and so telemedicine opens a whole new world to patients such as those.

What Prostate Cancer Populations Will Benefit Most From Telemedicine?

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What Prostate Cancer Population Will Benefit Most From Telemedicine? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

With a lack of staging in prostate cancer, which patients can benefit the most from telemedicine visits? Dr. Leanne Burnham maps out factors that may make some patients lower risk and situations that may warrant other patients to be seen in person to receive optimal prostate cancer care.

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials?

What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So, prostate cancer is a very diverse disease. It presents itself differently in the clinic in each individual patient, so who is considered low risk, who is considered high risk is really a personal conversation that you have with your physician one-on-one, and it’s based on a lot of different factors. It’s not as cut and dry as some other cancers where you may break the disease down by just stage, simply stage I, stage II, stage III, stage IV. There’s a lot that goes into determining how aggressive someone’s prostate cancer tumors are. That being said, if you are considered to be low risk, you may be undergoing active surveillance by your physician or watchful waiting and in that situation, telemedicine would probably be a perfect approach where you get your labs done every few months or whatever your physician decides. And they can track your PSA velocity or doubling time and seeing if your PSA is growing, by growing I mean increasing in circulation or if it’s not which would be ideal. If you are more high risk, then you may need to increase your telemedicine visits. And, of course, if you are taking therapies that cannot be done from home, then you would need to go to a clinical setting, so that would include radiation of course, and chemotherapy, immunotherapy, perhaps. If you’re enrolled in a clinical trial where you need to go on-site to receive the medication, then that’s something that cannot just be done by telemedicine, you would have to go in-person.

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients?

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Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

Prostate cancer patients often have financial costs associated with their care. Expert Dr. Leanne Burnham details ways that telemedicine reduces financial toxicity for prostate cancer care — and shares some of her own experience as a cancer patient when she was a doctoral student.

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So speaking about financial toxicity, let’s just talk about it when it comes to medical treatment in general. Financial toxicity comes in many forms, and I can speak to this a little bit on a personal level, I myself was a cancer patient when I was a doctoral student, and I had to take nine months off of school and do chemo and surgeries, and the whole nine yards and the strain that puts financially on a family depends on what kind of safety guard you have in place ahead of time. When you’re not expecting to get cancer when you’re a young person, it can throw a monkey wrench for sure. And so in my own personal situation, my husband owns a barbershop, and he doesn’t have sick days, right, so if he doesn’t go to work, leave and he doesn’t come home with money. So that time that I was sick, that was stressful on us, because he didn’t necessarily want to call off, but he wanted to call off so that he could be with me, and he’s very concerned after I’m having my treatment, but at the same time, he needs to go to work. And so the stress that that creates for the patient, for the caregiver, that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the healing process, because what we know is that stress kills literally, quite literally, and I’ve published on that topic before. As it pertains to prostate cancer, we know that chronic stress, cumulative stress spread out over time dysregulates your hormone function and leads to all kinds of disease, metabolic diseases, cancer down the road.

So financial toxicity is a real thing, and there are ways that telemedicine can help to mitigate some of that financial toxicity. So, for example, when you don’t have to call off work, let’s say to make your televisit, then that’s a really great thing. When you don’t have to try to find child care so that you can go to your appointments because now at the hospital setting or the doctors’ offices, you can’t bring your kids with you like you used to be able to just…okay, come sit in the waiting room, or come in the room. It’s not like that you can’t even enter the building most of the time, and so a lot of people have to try to find child care if they were going to go to the doctor in-person. But the benefit of telemedicine is you don’t have to do that, so that’s a saved cost. I know myself; I’ve taken televisit appointments during my lunch break while I’m in lab, and that just works out a lot better, it’s not a day that I have to call off work in order to make that happen. The other way that telemedicine can help reduce cost is there can be reduced visits to, let’s say, urgent care or the emergency room.

I can think of a few situations during this quarantine era with my kids even where certain symptoms come up and I think, “Oh, I really need to take him to urgent care,” but I schedule a video appointment with their doctor, the doctor goes over a symptom checklist and says, “You know what, you don’t need to actually bring them in for an appointment, just bring them in and have them do this lab work real quick and just be in and out, and then we’ll let you know if there needs to be a follow-up.” And then most of the time, there doesn’t need to be a follow-up, or there’s just a prescription that’s needed, and you avoid the extra cost of what going to urgent care would have been, going to the emergency room would have been. And you’re reducing your exposure to COVID, which is not a financial toxicity question, but that’s a benefit that telemedicine has as well.

What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

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What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

For prostate cancer care, what are some differences that patients experience with telemedicine visits rather than in-person visits? Dr. Leanne Burnham details some telehealth limitations that she has noticed in care for her patients.

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

What Prostate Cancer Populations Will Benefit Most From Telemedicine?

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

Well, some limitations that we’re seeing with telemedicine use, I can speak to, not only as a scientist, but also as an advocate for my loved ones, and seeing how telemedicine works in real time. It’s a little bit different when you can’t have your spouse or your parent or your sibling come with you into an office visit. Having your advocate sitting next to you on a virtual visit can come across a little bit more differently than when it’s in-person, and so that some of the personal effects are lost, I feel at times with the telemedicine approach. Then there’s also the idea of a telemedicine appointment often being like a double appointment, so let’s say, for example, if I were to go to a doctor in-person and I need to have some lab work done, you kind of can get it done at the same time. You go to your appointment, and then you go around the corner to get your labs done. Whereas now it may be that you have a telemedicine visit, and now it’s like, okay, you need to go get those labs, so you still have to find other time where you have to go and get that done, so it can tend to spread the experience out for some people.

What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

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What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

What are some of the telemedicine benefits that prostate cancer patients can experience beyond the most obvious ones? Expert Dr. Leanne Burnham shares patient safety, logistical, and care option benefits that she has seen with telehealth for her patients — and also shares the percentage of prostate cancer patients who prefer virtual visits

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

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Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit

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How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So telemedicine is presenting all kinds of new opportunities for any patient, but in terms of prostate cancer patients they fall into that category as well. What we’re seeing is that actually, the majority of patients prefer telemedicine upwards of 75 percent prefer to have that option, and adding virtual care has a few benefits including you don’t have to travel to the doctor, and you have access to maybe more options, more physician options, more institutional options. Maybe there’s a setting where they have a treatment that the location that you previously have gone to, doesn’t have. You have an option to network outside of your usual team to speak with other specialists, maybe get a second opinion. So that is something that patients are really saying that they like in the time of COVID that we are right now, where telemedicine is definitely increasing.

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Myeloma Patients?

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Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Myeloma Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

With the entry of telemedicine into the multiple myeloma care toolkit, there are some real benefits to the cost of care visits. Dr. Sarah Holstein outlines some of the financial benefits that she’s seen for her patients – and how the logistics of scheduling appointments has changed.

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Will Telemedicine Be a Long-Term Survival Tool for Myeloma Patients?

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Transcript:

Dr. Sarah Holstein

So, there’s definitely quite a bit of financial toxicity associated with being a patient who has myeloma. There of course is the cost of the drugs and treatments themselves, but there’s also the personal time cost. So, the cost that it takes to perhaps take a half day off of work or a full day of work to see your provider in person, and the flexibility that telemedicine allows, namely being able to do your appointment from either the privacy of your own home or in some cases the privacy of your own office or even your own car, really allows patients to keep going about their business without having to take all that time off to come travel. There’s the cost associated with gas mileage in some cases, costs associated with parking, although thankfully, that’s not a cost that’s occurred here at Nebraska Medicine. But I certainly know that that can be an issue at other institutions and can really add up for patients over time. So, it’s really been so much easier for patients to get in to see me even when my schedule is fairly full, because they don’t have to think about, “Well, I don’t need to leave work an hour, try to go over my lunch break,” or something like that, they can just schedule it and do it from their office.

I think it’s been a good thing for patients and hopefully is cutting down costs for them.

How Will the Pandemic Impact Multiple Myeloma Trials?

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How Will the Pandemic Impact Multiple Myeloma Trials? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed multiple myeloma clinical trials, and how can telemedicine play a role in trials? Dr. Sarah Holstein shares her perspective on how trials were altered and her suggestions for improvements in trials.

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Will Telemedicine Be a Long-Term Survival Tool for Myeloma Patients?

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Transcript:

Dr. Sarah Holstein

Early on, I was very concerned about the ability to conduct clinical trials during the pandemic, early on, at least in our institution, and I know that there were many others across the country, there was a lot of concern about really limiting what was considered by the IRB (Institutional Review Board) to be an essential contact. They perhaps placed an emphasis on later phase clinical trials and thought that the earlier phase clinical trials weren’t necessarily proving to be a benefit for patients and therefore shouldn’t be opened, and I would have to say that that was not what my thought was. I really think that all clinical trials, whether it’s a Phase I, Phase II, or Phase III or of utmost importance to our patients and are important for their care. So again, early on, I was very concerned about limiting the access of clinical trials to patients. As the pandemic has continued and it’s become clear that this is going to be life as we know it for unfortunately, quite some time, I know at our institution, we’ve really tried to be as safe as possible, but all clinical trials are open and we’re allowed to enroll, I think there still is room for improvement with respect to how telemedicine is incorporated into clinical trials, and whether or not we can do things like allowing patients to get their study labs drawn closer to home as opposed to traveling to the academic center, so I think there continues to be room for improvement for really trying to minimize the amount of traveling that people do, and therefore the amount of potential exposure that patients have.

We still are not routinely using telemedicine for the clinical trial visits, that most of those are still in person. And I think depending on the specific trial, that is probably appropriate if you have a new agent and a lot of what you’re looking for is evidence of toxicity, I think it is important to be able to evaluate the patients in person and really be able to conduct a normal physical exam, having said that though, if a patient’s on a clinical trial where they’re receiving more standard of care, and perhaps it’s in a maintenance phase of a study, I think being able to utilize telehealth for some of those more routine visits would really be beneficial for both the patients and the healthcare team.

Is Telemedicine Here to Stay for Multiple Myeloma Care?

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Is Telemedicine Here to Stay for Multiple Myeloma Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

With the emergence of telemedicine for multiple myeloma care, it’s being looked at for long-term care. Myeloma expert Dr. Sarah Holstein shares her hopes for the future of telemedicine – and shares some tips for optimizing telehealth visits.

See More From the Myeloma TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

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Will Telemedicine Be a Long-Term Survival Tool for Myeloma Patients?

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What Are the Benefits of Telemedicine for Myeloma Patients?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Sarah Holstein

I really hope telemedicine is here to stay. If you’re practicing in a place like I am, where patients come from quite a distance, it would be great in the future if some of the more routine visits, can be a telemedicine and perhaps get into a rotation or maybe every three or four months, they come and see me in person versus the rest of their monthly visits via telemedicine. So, I very much hope that the government, as well as insurance carriers will continue to provide coverage for telehealth visits in the future, because I think it’s really broadened access for patients and it’s been a really wonderful thing for them in general. In terms of tips for preparing, some of it just comes down to understanding the technology and getting familiar with what you need to click on and making sure that you’ve allowed your iPad or your phone or computer access to your camera, it sounds silly, but sometimes a big chunk of the appointment can be eaten away because of the settings being wrong or pop-ups, so some of it is just trying to figure out the system ahead of time before you log on.

But other than that, I would say, making sure that you understand from your health care team, whether or not you can forward the link, if you’re using Zoom, for example, to other family members, so that you

can have multiple family members kind of Zoom in at the same time to be able to listen, and that way you’re not relying on yourself to take notes, and everybody doesn’t have to be in the same place at the same time, which again, given the pandemic is not wise anyways. So, I think just trying to figure out the technology involved and then making sure that you can have access or provide access to your family members or friends who want to virtually come to your visit with you is key for a successful visit.