Improving Access to Supportive Care on an Organizational Level With Korie Bigbee

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Are you looking for practical insights for maximizing your impact while staying on the cutting edge of cancer care? You’ve found the right place. Onc Nurse On Call is the new podcast by Oncology Nursing News’, hosted by editors-in-chief Patricia Jakel, MN, RN, AOCN, and Stephanie Desrosiers (formerly Jackson), DNP, MSN, RN, AOCNS, BMTCN, delivering maximum impact in minimum time.

In this week’s episode, Korie Bigbee, DNP, a nurse practitioner at City of Hope and Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, California, discusses survivorship planning within the scope of hematology and beyond, focusing on institutional tactics to expand survivorship programs as well as the importance of planning for patients’ futures in a world of expanding effective treatment options for patients with cancer.

She explained that from an operational standpoint, sometimes the best way to justify expanding survivorship resources to institutional decision-makers is to explain the long-term cost benefit; a new consult is more lucrative than seeing the same patient every year for a decade or more.

“Putting it in the position where you say, ‘We saved you this money because there was no [emergency department] visit. There was no readmission’: all those things count,” said Bigbee. “Patient satisfaction factors into how patients come back…retention is also a piece of that.”

Bigbee rounds the episode off with a reminder that survivorship planning is essential in the evolving world of oncology.

“You can ask any one of my patients. They will tell you: ‘Korie always says what she’s doing for me right now is to benefit me 70 years from now,’” said Bigbee. “When they’re mad because they’ve never been on a blood pressure medication, but I start them on one, it’s because I know I need to keep [the patient’s] heart [beating] 70 years from now.”

She iterates that patients sometimes need a nudge in the direction of long-term planning with a reminder of the life the patient has left to live.

“If I’m looking at your quality of life, I want to make sure that 60 or 70 years from now, if you want to run with your grandkids, you can still run with your grandkids,” she emphasized. “…Sometimes you need a nugget to keep you going.”

Tune in to Onc Nurse On Call every other Wednesday for more insights on all things oncology nursing.