Pairing Women’s Health and Oncology at the 51st AMCCBS

For more than 50 years, ACCC’s Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit (AMCCBS) has brought together the entire multidisciplinary cancer care team to explore cutting-edge solutions; the complex and evolving cancer care landscape; and the convergence of business, policy, and technology to advance the equitable delivery of high-quality care. 

To provide more insight into their upcoming session at the 51st AMCCBS, The Importance of Pairing Women’s Health and Oncology, ACCCBuzz recently spoke with Tessa Kerby, MBA, MPH, principal; and Matt Cox, MPH, partner, at Whitecap Health Advisors LLC. 

ACCCBuzz: What can attendees of the 51st AMCCBS expect from your panel discussion? 

Tessa: Our presentation is centered on the connection point between women’s health and oncology. Organizations often separate these 2 spheres of health, even though women make up 50% of the population and have frequent interactions with oncology services. Our discussion will be focused on where we see a lot of opportunity to create stronger connections between these 2 service lines. 

We hope that from the conversation, the group will have a chance to learn more about women’s health, why it’s important, why they should be thinking about it, how it’s connected to oncology, the reasons to prioritize both of those service lines, and then get a real-world case study about how that can look. Matt and I will be joined by a health-system leader who oversees both women’s health and oncology and is actively developing a more cohesive model for connections between these 2 services.

Matt: We intend to discuss the opportunities that exist for health systems to build connections between their women’s health and oncology service lines. Women’s Oncology is a bit of an undefined space and every health system we work with defines it a little bit differently. It is also a rapidly evolving landscape and health systems have a role to play in designing and coordinating programs to best meet the needs of this growing and unique patient population. Our presentation will highlight the strategic importance for health systems to formalize their Women’s Oncology program and the associated opportunities and benefits of doing so.

ACCCBuzz: Describe the most significant recent advancements in women’s health services.

Tessa: From a technological standpoint, we have seen huge advancements in the past few years, notably in diagnostics. Providers are looking at wellness, diet and nutrition, genetics, and how best to care for women before, during, and after they are pregnant. We have seen the incidence of cancer explode over the past couple of years, and that’s primarily due to technological advances and artificial intelligence (AI). Roughly 40% of women have high-density breast tissue, which in the past may have caused patients to receive a false positive and have to get multiple mammograms or even invasive biopsies. Now you have AI coming in and overreading your radiologist, and suddenly providers are seeing malignancies a lot earlier—and more accurately. 

That’s one piece of it. Another piece is coordinated care, which we’ll be spending a lot of time on in our presentation. This aspect is really important, because we’re starting to think about women’s health as a continuum, where the first time most women access the health care system is through family planning or an obstetrician-gynecologist. Those are the first places they touch base, with the first cancer screening being a Pap smear. How do we then move from family planning to building a pathway into oncology when issues are uncovered? 

Lately, oncology has done a really great job of that. They have patient navigators, nurse navigators, and excellent care coordination programs. I think women’s health is starting to look at oncology and say, “How can we pull that back into women’s health and make these service lines intersect?” 

ACCCBuzz: What are some of the most exciting opportunities in women’s health with respect to oncology? 

Matt: Many health systems do not have established Women’s Oncology programs or have designed programs that only meet a fraction of the needs for this patient population. Service line leaders often know the need is there, but they haven’t quite figured it out or committed the necessary resources to do it right. 

The burden of Women’s Oncology—or cancers that affect breast and reproductive organs—is high. In fact, the American Cancer Society reported that these cancers represent about 22% of all cancers in the US each year across all sexes and about 44% of all cancers in female patients alone. In addition, 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in her lifetime and, more often than not, breast and gynecological cancers represent the highest volume of tumor sites seen each year within a given cancer program.

We also know that women diagnosed with cancer face a unique cancer journey in that they end up coping with challenges concerning not just mortality, but quality-of-life issues like fertility, sexual health, and self-image. This is a patient population that truly needs to be managed in a unique way and within a comprehensive and formalized program.

One of the biggest trends, not just in women’s health but oncology in general right now, is that cancer rates in young and middle-aged women are rising and far surpassing those in men of the same age; this trend is most striking in women under 50, whose cancer rates are now 82% higher than those of their male counterparts. While cancer mortality is falling across the board, this progress is somewhat tempered by a rising incidence in young and middle-aged women.

This trend underscores the need to increase investment from health systems in cancer treatment and in cancer prevention and screening for women. Equitable access to screening programs, particularly for underserved groups of patients, survivors, and their families who are genetically at risk, continues to save countless lives. Screening programs in breast and gynecological cancers are the most critical component of early detection, and that’s where the overlap between women’s health and oncology comes into play.

In many of the health systems we work with, there are ownership issues with who is managing the multifaceted aspects of the women’s cancer care continuum. Often, it’s women’s health or even the radiology service line managing cancer screening and diagnostics for women, but the oncology service line manages postdiagnosis aspects of cancer treatment. That coordination across the full cancer care continuum—from prevention and screening, diagnosis, and treatment all the way through to survivorship—is typically pretty fragmented and managed by disparate service lines or departments. In our experience, Women’s Oncology warrants a more coordinated, cohesive and integrated approach given the increasing burden of the disease and evolving needs of these patients.

It is this opportunity to marry women’s health and oncology that really excites us: to design a singular, coordinated, cohesive women’s oncology program that integrates both service lines into a model built around the unique needs of women who are either at risk or already diagnosed with cancer. Most health systems don’t package their services into a formalized women’s oncology program. And if they do, women’s oncology often means treatment; but it really needs to encompass the entire cancer care continuum, from prevention to survivorship. In practice, those service lines need to create an infrastructure to manage that patient population together as they develop program goals and strategies. During our session at AMCCBS, Tessa and I, along with our client, will address tactics to do that.

With the 51st AMCCBS just weeks away, time to register is running short. Visit the ACCC website for details so you don’t miss out on the many expert-led sessions lined up for attendees. 

Rachel Radwan is the Editorial Manager for the Association of Cancer Care Centers.