HJBR Jul/Aug 2021

at the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center in Covington. We’ll still be able to continue to provide the supportive services that we’ve had avail- able in the Covington marketplace since we’ve been there, and that is access to lead- ing cancer care technology, access to lead- ing clinical trials, Mary Bird Perkins being a CO-PI [co-principal investigator] and clini- cal trial base for the National Cancer Insti- tute, access to survivorship programming — those are all services that we will continue to provide and support and expand in part- nership with Northshore oncology. Editor In your opinion, do the Baton Rouge and New Orleans markets differ as far as cancer care? Fontenot They’re similar in that we’re all focused on the same thing, and that is managing patients with extremely com- plex diagnoses. The approach that different healthcare providers take inmanaging those patients is extremely variable. What I would say that differs in our approach is that Mary Bird tends to be very community-focused in how we organize our care, such that the experience that a patient in our Northshore market is going to have may be different from the experience of patients here in the Baton Rouge marketplace. And the reason for that has to do with how healthcare is structured in terms of physician groups, hospital organizations, ancillary services — all of those are structured differently in each marketplace; the players are different. So, our approach to creating that unified front to a cancer patient is going to necessarily be different across marketplaces. Mary Bird doesn’t use a one-size-fits- all approach in saying that the same net- work or process of care, coordination of care, in Covington is also going to be the best approach in Hammond or the best approach in Baton Rouge or Gonzalez or Houma, wherever you’re talking about. Our standards of care for actual therapy are con- sistent, but the way patients get connected to those services can be much different across marketplaces for the reasons that I just mentioned. Editor In years past, many local folks with means, upon diagnosis, would go to say, MD Anderson, for consultation and treatment plans, then get treatment closer to home at Mary Bird Perkins. Is this still commonplace, and is this advised for some cancers more than others? Fontenot It still happens, and we encourage patients to seek out second opinions. But, I think, by and large, what most patients dis- cover as they go through this process is that the treatment plans that they would ben- efit from at MD Anderson in Houston are exactly the same that they would receive here in Baton Rouge or on the Northshore or any of our other markets, and they have the additional benefit of having to experi- ence their journey through cancer treat- ment with the support of their community and family and friends and not having to leave home. What I think many patients and families are also surprised by once they go through this process is that our providers, our phy- sicians and doctors and professional staff, receive their training at the MD Andersons of the world. If you look at the roster of our oncologists and inspect or review where they trained, they’ve been trained at Har- vard, at MDAnderson, Memorial Sloan Ket- tering. The premier cancer centers in the U.S. are where the team at Mary Bird Perkins trained, so patients have the benefit not only of receiving the same course of care locally that they would have received at MDAnder- son, but they also receive it from physicians and providers who trained at those major academic programs. Editor So, a little about you. You wear at least two hats at Mary Bird Perkins — chief operat- ing officer and chief of medical physics. Do you prefer one over the other? Fontenot I don’t know if I can answer that one, Dianne. It probably depends on when you ask me. I was touched by cancer at a very young age; I grew up with an interest in wanting to get involved in some way, to help in whatever way that I could, patients who had a cancer diagnosis. I didn’t know how I would do that when I figured out that that’s what I wanted to do, but it was something that was important to me. I found my way into physics as an undergraduate student and had no idea what I was going to do with that degree as it applied to what my goals were until I, just by happenstance, was made aware of the field of medical physics, which was an ideal fit for me because it really is the intersection of the science of technol- ogy with the art of medicine. I enrolled in the graduate school at MD Anderson in Houston and got a PhD in medical physics there, got board certified in medical physics and practiced here at Mary Bird starting about 13 years ago. And that’s what I wanted to do. That was my motiva- tion. The academic program that Mary Bird Perkins has with LSU to support medical physics is partly what drew me here, and being able to get involved in education and research in oncology as a medical physicist were all things that appealed to me. Somewhere along the way, very early on, I also got very interested in health policy and pursued that through the professional societies that I have access to. I ended up doing a one-year fellowship in health pol- icy at the national level, which provided me with a great experience and terrific insight 12 JUL / AUG 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE