Meeting the challanges in today's outpatient oncology setting: a case study.

Abstract

Physicians and staff in outpatient oncology settings are feeling besieged as healthcare trends accelerate. One of these is to provide a greater number and variety of treatments on an outpatient basis. The second is the shift from indemnity insurance to a managed care environment to help control the costs. The challenge at the Center for Cancer Care at OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, Illinois, was to create processes that increased efficiency, dealt with expanded patient caseloads, improved the level of care provided and took into account the shortage of oncology nurses.