The cancer care landscape is an ever-evolving one thanks to a myriad of factors, including healthcare reform, accountable care and an aging boomer population, and most notably, a focus on team-based, outpatient treatment plans.
As reported in a recent article in Healthcare Design, 85 to 90 percent of cancer care now occurs in outpatient settings through a multidisciplinary team of caregivers — oncologists, radiologists, surgeons, pathologists — located at the same facility. This approach, combined with other influences, demands an overhaul of cancer facilities and the technology that supports the treatments that occurs within them.
As one physician stresses in the article, today’s cancer centers must be designed around this multi-disciplinary approach that integrates surgery with traditional private practice physicians under one roof that is, more often than not, hospital run.
The article examines new, successfully designed cancer care centers across the United States – ones that are focused on bringing all the key players of a treatment plan under one roof – giving cancer patients and their families a feeling of control and comfort from delivery of care, to ease of movement throughout the facilities, with thoughtful, strategic placement of patient services. Some of these centers also incorporate areas for wellness activities, including yoga rooms, rehab facilities, massotherapy rooms and more, marrying the concepts of Western medicine with those of a more Eastern approach.
Beyond the patient experience, today’s cancer centers not only must be designed to effortlessly support current technologies, but also be expansive enough to easily incorporate emerging and future technologies.
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