Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, serves as Chief Medical Officer at Yale Cancer Center.
On August 25th, Dr. Billingsley will speak at Becker's Hospital Review Oncology Virtual Forum. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the virtual event, which will take place on August 25, 2020.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Billingsly's session, click here.
Question: What is the No. 1 concern you have for your practice amid the pandemic?
Kevin Billingsley: Our number one concern has been creating systems of cancer care that allow us to continue to serve cancer patients while simultaneously protecting them from COVID 19. We know cancer patients are at increased risk of serious complications or mortality from SARS CoV infection. Protecting these patients is an absolute priority. This has required multiple operational adjustments in surgery, infusion, and radiation therapy. We have also significantly altered both our inpatient and ambulatory management protocols.
Q: How have your priorities changed since the pandemic began?
KB: We have had to prioritize patient safety over some patient experience elements that in other circumstances would be incredibly important. For example, we generally support having a family member with the patient through all infusion visits and hospital stays. In the pandemic, we have minimized visitors to maintain social distancing and reduce patient exposure.
Q: Where are the biggest opportunities in cancer care in 2020 and beyond?
KB: The pandemic has shown us that we can adapt to new care models more quickly and effectively than we every imagined. Moving forward we have an opportunity to use both Telehealth and as well as remote biometrics to deliver care in ways that are more convenient and accessible to patients. However, we will need to be mindful of the fact that access to technology is not universal and we have to make sure that this evolution does not exacerbate current healthcare disparities.
Q: What is the most exciting clinical innovation in cancer care today?
KB: There is a multitude of exciting developments. The ongoing development of immuno-oncology may be the biggest story. We are quickly seeing new opportunities for utilizing immune checkpoint inhibitors or more importantly these drugs in combination with traditional drugs or other biologic agents.
In addition, our ability to deeply characterize tumors with next-generation sequencing will allow us to more accurately target therapy and reduce toxicity and nonproductive therapies.
There are also exciting developments in surgical oncology and radiation oncology that will allow more precise applications of these locoregional modalities to treat patients with less toxicity and shorter hospital stays for surgical patients.