Enabling cross-institutional collaboration to improve cancer care in central Texas.
Framing the barriers to patient centered care
Upstream collaborated with LIVESTRONG to help create a comprehensive model of patient-centered cancer care (PCCC) that would guide the creation of The Livestrong Cancer Institutes (LCI) which was being built at The University of Texas from the ground up - with the goal of providing a “fresh-canvas” for innovating new models for PCCC and taking quality care to an unprecedented level.
The model was developed from a list of 110 PCCC ingredients identified by the community of care care providers, advocates, and key influencers, which were distilled into 6 core pillars for ensuring PCCC care addresses the patient’s values & changing priorities. These were understanding the whole person, incorporating all aspects of well-being into a holistic care experience (including the psychological, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual), educating health care providers, patients and families on all aspects of the cancer journey; empowering them to engage effectively, building effective communication systems to ensure all parties involved in patient care are connected and have the right information; and synchronizing all parties involved in patient care through systems for continuous care quality improvement.
Upstream also synthesized these inputs into a patient-centric view of the journey to survivorship and the barriers they face along the way, juxtaposed against a system-centric view of barriers to delivering on the 6 pillars of PCCC. This view was used as a framework to engage the community of cancer care stakeholders to develop strategies to address patient barriers.
Identifying a patient-centered care model
Using this framework, Upstream facilitated a number of sessions with the community of cancer care stakeholders to generate challenge statements - using first of all a “top down” approach to make system-wide changes to address the 6 pillars of PCCC, and then a “bottom up” approach to create solutions that affect discrete points of the patient journey but that would later be linked to provide more systemic solutions.
With Upstream’s input, The LIVESTRONG Foundation facilitated a PCCC Symposium with influential stakeholders in the field (including survivors, caregivers, health care providers, academics, researchers, community organizations, business leaders, and policymakers) to advance PCCC across multiple institutions.
Upstream assisted by structuring ideation activities based on human centered design principles at the PCCC symposium, using the PCCC framework to illuminate barriers to ideal care, drive prioritization, and co-create new and ideal patient experiences.
Driving strategies to scale impact
The outputs from the symposium were synthesized by Upstream into a deliverable to inspire industry leaders not present at the Symposium to consider how they might enhance models of PCCC within their own institutional context.
This created a forum for thought leaders in the eco-system of all constituents involved in care for cancer to collaborate, share ideas, and make a broader impact.
The deliverable was optimized to drive action within their organizations by leveraging the principles of Design Thinking, the PCCC framework for change, as well as thoughts from the symposium in regards to which opportunities to prioritize, and the ideas attendees developed to deliver PCCC.
The LIVESTRONG Foundation’s partnership with Upstream helped advance PCCC, extend the mission of The LIVESTRONG Foundation further into the cancer care community, and position the foundation as a pre-eminent thought leader in PCCC.
Upstream also delivered strategies to enable LIVESTRONG to scale their impact by providing thought leadership to the industry in new ways, and transforming their offerings to survivors from a one-to-one to one-to-many approach.
The Patient-Centered Cancer Care Model output, also designed by Upstream:
“The frameworks that Upstream helped us develop were tremendously valuable and we still use them several years later with our ongoing initiatives to help identify opportunities to make cancer care services more patient-centric and to guide the creation of new solutions to better meet patient needs.”
- Senior Program Manager, The LIVESTRONG Foundation