Cancer Treatment Centers of America Launches Customized Care

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), working in conjunction with Allscripts and NantHealth, has devised a new system for delivering customized cancer treatment and care for each patient. Known as Clinical Pathways, Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s program is a paradigm shift in cancer care, combining two types of technology, benefitting patients and assisting doctors: NantHealth’s eviti® solution and Allscripts’s Sunrise electronic health record (EHR). Together, the two technologies merge the details of each patient’s case with a compilation of the latest cancer research, treatment regimens and complementary therapies. The result is a comprehensive and individualized list of care protocols that allows oncologists and patients a clear understanding of all that is available to that patient, enabling them to select an appropriate and personalized course of treatment.

Engaging Clinical Pathways’ integrative platforms puts the entire contents of an unbiased, evidence-based medical library at oncologists’ fingertips. Moreover, Clinical Pathways incorporates all of the following:

• Comparisons of treatment options, including costs
• Access to referenced, up-to-date guidelines, response rates, adverse drug reactions and toxicity
• Specific, customized treatment regimens for each patient
• A treatment regimen recommended by eviti and mapped within the patient’s EHR, creating order sets that blend evidence-based clinical approaches with supportive therapies that optimize the patient’s quality of life
• Safe and easy computer order entry for each patient simply by tapping the screen
• Clinical data that supports the treatment options
• Real-time availability at the point of care

With patient-centered cancer care as the foundation of all that Cancer Treatment Centers of America does, teaming with NantHealth and Allscripts was a natural choice. Indeed, since 1988, CTCA has been committed to providing personalized cancer care that combines a variety of treatments tailored to the needs of the individual patient. It’s the awareness that each patient — even each cancer — is different that motivates CTCA to combine conventional cancer-treatment methods such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immuno therapy with evidence-backed supportive therapies that counteract the side effects of treatment such as physical therapy, nutritional reinforcement as well as naturopathic medicine. This holistic approach to patient care underscores CTCA’s dedication to meeting individual needs in providing care and treatment for adult cancer patients.

This individualization is further enhanced by the expertise of the doctors. In all five of the hospitals in the CTCA network across the United States, the doctors are cancer specialists, including board-certified oncologists with advanced training in specific areas of cancer, from breast, lung and prostate cancer to colorectal, ovarian and melanoma, among others. As part of each patient’s care team, these oncologists work in collaboration with other medical professionals, including dieticians and palliative care physicians, to ensure that every aspect of patient care is included, augmenting the patient’s quality of life. At Cancer Treatment Centers of America care and support of the whole person is at the heart of all they do.