HJBR Jan/Feb 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  JAN / FEB 2022 21 MBP continued... Stevens: OneOncology is an organization that started a few years ago, and they’re also exclusively focused on cancer. They do that by aligning with organizations like Mary Bird and community oncology practices to provide resources to those organizations that will allow them to continue to indepen- dently focus on in cancer care. They bring, as I mentioned earlier, the One Research component. They bring a variety of admin- istrative tools that we never could afford. Workday is an ERP system that allows orga- nizations to integrate accounting and HR and all these other types of things that we would’ve loved to have had but couldn’t afford. We’ll be able to put our resources on the Workday platform and have access to a lot of valuable analytics and employee engagement tools that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. They have national relationships with key cancer care manufacturers, so we’ll be in a priority position when we’re trying to access new technology or new equipment; not only will we have priority access to it, we’ll be able to buy it at a reasonable price. They have a cloud-based electronic health record focused on cancer called OncoEMR, which is made by a company called Flatiron. It’s cloud-based and acces- sible across that entire network, so if a phy- sician here in Baton Rouge or our location on the Northshore has a patient with a unique diagnosis, they can literally ping the entire OneOncology physician network, and they’ll get a bounce back of a virtual, real- time tumor board, if you will, where the net- work can communicate with that physician and say, hey, we’ve had 15 of those particu- lar types of patients with the same type of abnormalities that you’re seeing, and here’s what we did and here’s the outcome and les- sons learned. It’ll help physicians real-time manage the situation. Effectively, they are a business partner and manager. OneOncology does not pro- vide care. Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Cen- ter continues as a nonprofit, community- owned organization led by a volunteer board of directors, and we have aligned ourselves with, effectively, a manager who’s bringing all these resources that I just men- tioned to bear for patients across the Mary Bird network in Louisiana. Editor: You will stay independent. Stevens: Yes, absolutely. Editor: What will set your operations apart between you and the Lake? If you were a patient, had a patient or a loved one with cancer, how would you choose which group to get care from? Stevens: Well, when you’re told you have cancer — and I’ve talked with and had the privilege of working with hundreds if not thousands of individuals and families impacted by cancer — when those words are spoken to somebody, it’s very sobering, and they invest the time and attention to understand what they’re facing and what their options are, and so do their physicians that work with them. Together, the physician that diagnosed them and the patient and the family find the best avenue for care. That best avenue largely centers around physi- cian relationships and physician-patient relationships. We, as a consequence, believe that if we invest in the physician-patient relation- ship and resource the doctors in our net- work to have what they need — to have the best nurses, the best medical assistance, the best technology — and if we remove barriers from them to be able to take care of their patients, that people, when they’re trying to figure out where to get the best cancer care, are going to find Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center’s physicians, because they’re the best physicians to take care of them. Editor: What will this mean for providers? Will they have to choose between facilities now, or will they have privileges at first? Stevens: Hospitals are all medical commu- nities, and each hospital across the coun- try, here in Louisiana, they’re like little cities, and we expect that those cities are going to continue to exist and thrive. Patients have affinity for hospitals. Some patients love hospital A or hospital B or hospital C. This opportunity with OneOncology allows us to participate and be a part of all of those medical communities. So, our anticipation is that where people want to be seen and have their care delivered, we want to be there for them. That’s ultimately one of the other things that, when we were wrestling with how to make the right decision about the future of the organization, we’ve, for a long time, been Switzerland. Seven, eight years ago, you would’ve found us on eight different hospital campuses, and we made it work. But, when the big hospital systems in the state started consolidating, we were forced to ask, do we choose sides? If you choose sides with either of those two large health systems, you’re kind of shutting out the other half. So, we said, to pursue our mis- sion, it’s more likely that we’ll be able to work with more organizations across the state and region if we continue to be very transparent about all we want to do, to help people with cancer. I do think, ultimately, when all the dust settles and all the great things that happen in the communities we serve and cancer care continues to evolve in our state and become more readily available and higher quality everywhere, that Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center will continue to have strong working relationships with every organization, because, ultimately, when you get past all the business rhetoric, everybody wants to help people. Editor: You’ve announced the new partner- shipwith BatonRouge General, and I believe you plan on continuing your partnership with Women’s Hospital. What happens to the Pennington Cancer Center there, and what do those partnerships look like? Do they change with your affiliation? Stevens: I think the Pennington Cancer Center is a vibrant community cancer pro- gram that’s been built over the past many years, and I hope it doesn’t change. I hope that ability to bring resources from Mary Bird and resources from the General and