Overview
The Cancer Partnership is the result of a first-ever collaboration between four leading medical groups – Providence Everett Medical Center, The Everett Clinic, Western Washington Medical Group and Northwest Washington Radiation Oncology Associates. The Cancer Partnership hosts some of the most sought-after cancer technology never before available in the Puget Sound region. It offers all aspects of outpatient cancer care under one roof. In this interview, Dr. Neuger addresses breast cancer treatment, The Everett Clinic, and communication between departments.
Interview with Dr. Elizabeth L. Neuger, MD, The Everett Clinic
INTERVIEWER: How do you coordinate care after the surgery with primary care physicians, and how are you intertwined with that?
DR. NEUGER: Everett Clinic patients are so easy to care for because of the computer program. When I see a patient post-operatively and I clear them from a surgical point of view, my note gets sent immediately to the primary care doctors, and they have it at their fingertips. The oncologists have it at their fingertips, especially for breast cancer.
Our breast cancer program in The Everett Clinic is as good as any breast cancer program around. You know, having been at the University of Washington and here… There’s nothing better than what we have here.
Communication is absolutely one of the most important things in patient care. Whether it between the radiologist, the oncologist, the primary care doc. And, even though the breast center itself isn’t part of The Everett Clinic, we actually meet weekly with the radiologist, with the pathologist, with the radiation oncologist, the cancer doctors, the physical therapist, the people running the clinical trials… We all meet as a group weekly to discuss these patients. Breast patients are discussed that way. Primary care patients, we discuss with them. Patients who don’t have cancer… It’s just easy communication.
INTERVIEWER: Is that a unique model to care here? I’ve never heard of such a diverse group of experts coming together and discussing individual cases, one at a time.
DR. NEUGER: I think for breast cancer you’ll find that in various places, in various degrees. I can say that the breast cancer conference we hold here is very well-attended by all specialties. I can’t think of a time where we didn’t have all breast cancer specialties covered at the conference.
I can’t speak as to whether or not that’s true everywhere. I know that every patient who comes through our breast center, who has the diagnosis of breast cancer, gets filtered into that conference. You know a lot of places, the doctors have to call and request that the patients be put into the conference. Every patient who gets diagnosed at the breast center here shows up on the conference list.
The patients don’t go to this conference. This is where the doctors sit around and we look at every x-ray, we look at the pathology slides. You know, most surgeons just look at the pathology report. We actually look at the pathology slides, where we say “This is the cell, this is the margin, is this an adequate margin?” I sit next to my friend, who’s a radiation oncologist, who also is a specialist in their field? And they say, “Yes, that’s an adequate margin,” or, “No, you need to go back and do more.”
You know, just last month a paper came out about how to treat auxiliary node disease in breast cancer which is changing. It used to be that if you had a positive sentinel node, you would take all the lymph nodes out. Well, this paper came out last month, and we were already talking about it at our conference this morning… We had a patient who fit the criteria, who had a positive sentinel node, who now will be spared another surgical procedure because of this new paper that came out just a month ago.
The Everett Clinic is a locally owned and nationally recognized physician group practice. The Everett Clinic has over 1,500 staff, and more than 300 physicians. The Everett Clinic has three pharmacies, two surgery centers with advanced technology, and eight urgent care Walk-In Clinics. The Everett Clinic serves more than 5,000 patients each week.
Top physicians and honors are fantastic, but it is also the nuances of health care delivery that make The Everett Clinic exceptional. The most important example is communication. It is the key ingredient for a successful relationship between you and your doctor. By employing their own program called “Listening Well”, wherein each doctor goes through communication training, you’ll be assured that your doctor wants to hear from you. You are the expert in how your body feels. At The Everett Clinic, doctors want to hear from you in order to make the most informed recommendations for your care possible.