Jay Bishoff, MD, a physician with more than 30 years of urological surgery experience, joined New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health in August to oversee the health system's prostate cancer program.
"They hired me to bring my vision of what the comprehensive prostate cancer care program can look like. And of course, I can't do that alone," he told Becker's in September. "It's a pie-in-the sky dream, unless you're given the resources, the people and the whole infrastructure to help your vision become reality. And that's what they do at Northwell."
Since assuming his new role at the health system's Smith Institute for Urology, Dr. Bishoff has brought together a team of researchers to study less invasive, more cost-effective approaches to detecting the disease, including a urine test that distinguishes prostate cancer cells.
"This will even further decrease the need for MRIs and biopsies because we will be able to do a simple urine test with a very high sensitivity, specificity to see if you even need a biopsy," he said. "So what we're focused on is improving quality of care and outcomes. And we know from a lot of research that if we improve our outcomes in each area, then we significantly drop the cost of healthcare."
The team is also working to improve the effectiveness of the prostate-specific antigen test. Research has shown the blood test, commonly used to determine an individual's risk for prostate cancer, is not always effective.
"We are using computer logic from a study that was done and published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002 called the Prostate Cancer Chemoprevention Trial," Dr. Bishoff said. "One of the most important things that came out of that trial was that your absolute PSA value is not very helpful. So when men get a PSA at Northwell in the very near future, it will print out a risk stratification program based upon data from [that trial]."
Prostate cancer remains a significant cause of mortality among men in the U.S., ranking just below some skin cancers and lung cancer. Dr. Bishoff said accurate and efficient screening is more important than ever given the large number of care deferments in the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think one of the things that we all have to realize is that cancer didn't stop because the world stopped. Cancer is still out there at the same rate," he said. "So our message is we've got to get back on top of working with these patients screening for prostate cancer, but we have to be smarter."