Interview with C2 President’s award recipient 2020 Richard Dean
On October 21st, AstraZeneca and Scientific American Custom Media held the 2nd annual Cancer Community (C2) Awards virtually. This award ceremony celebrates the unsung heroes of cancer care. There are four awards: Catalyst for Change, Catalyst for Care, Catalyst for Precision Medicine & The President’s Award.
I had the great pleasure and honor to speak
with the recipient of this year’s President’s Award: Richard Dean from Marriottsville, MD.
Maggie Kudirka: So nice to meet you virtually, Richard, and congratulations! I watched the awards, and it was so moving. I'm truly honored to speak with you. What is your connection with cancer?
Richard Dean: My wife Janet developed ovarian cancer in 2009 and then my daughter developed the same cancer in 2010. So I know that really well. Janet passed in 2010 and Samara passed last year. It's been quite a journey. I have become an expert in terms of what it's like to live with cancer, to be a caregiver, and to see all those stops along the road.
MK: Did you ever go to the hospital or the emergency room with your wife or daughter, and what was that experience like for you as a caregiver?
RD: As you know, sometimes side effects from cancer treatments are worse than the cancer itself. The worst was when my daughter or wife would be in distress in between doctors’ visits or infusion visits.
As a caregiver, there is just such tremendous anxiety and you wonder: Oh my God, is there a place we can go? If you call a helpline, often it gets to the point where they're saying, “No, we can't help you. Just go to the ER.”
And it’s a distressful place. And when, you finally get to see a doctor they simply redirect you to the Oncology center, which is where you wanted to go in the first place. Then someone comes down to figure out what has to happen. That whole process was just so anxiety-filled. For a caregiver, that anxiety just wears on you because your loved one is in distress and you have to find help.
MK: How and why did you join the Johns Hopkins Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC)?
RD: A bit after Janet died in 2010, Hopkins was starting the PFAC. One of their nurses thought joining would be the right thing for me. I agreed because I’m invested in Hopkins and interested in improving treatment. It turned out to be a great opportunity for me.
MK: Sounds like a great opportunity. What is the Johns Hopkins Oncology Urgent Care Center and when did it start?
RD: It opened in 2014 and I was part of the planning. I have an engineering background so I worked with them to look at where the patients would come from; how many would come; and how long they would be there. I used engineering queuing theory to figure out how many beds were needed and how many specialists. After we started it up, it just ran. It fit like the last piece in a puzzle fits in – it was perfect. Almost from day one, it ran and operated smoothly; it really fills a void for oncology patients.
MK: Why is a center like that so important for cancer patients, especially during a global pandemic, like we're in right now?
RD: I think the key is that it's focused on the complications of cancer and its treatments. There ought to be a medical specialty for that because of the many different cancers and the many different treatments.
Often when you go to an ER, they don't know what to do, and they don't really have the ability to do anything for you. At the oncology urgent care center at Hopkins, if you're a Hopkins patient, they have all your records; they have direct access to staff; and they know about all the things that need to be done. They know exactly what treatment you need, and they also can do the triage if you really need to be admitted. It's a direct path to admission.
Now, if you've been in cancer care, you know there are times it's really hard to find a doctor. Your doctor is a great resource, but they could be in the midst of their daily schedule, and it's really hard to get them to see you. You need a doctor to get you admitted. If you go to the urgent care center, they can admit you directly. It's a seamless operation: you go in; they do the triage, and you’re admitted if necessary.
The reality is that 80% of the patients that go to the oncology urgent care, actually go home because they can treat the issue and send the patient home. And that's where you want to be. If you go to the ER, only 20 percent of those people go home. That's a huge difference not only in the quality of the care, but also the cost of the care and the quality of life. For example: you might spend 8 hours in the ER before you get seen, and then, they don't know what to do. When you go to the oncology urgent care center, you know from the first moment you arrive that you're being cared for, that you will have the treatment you need, and that they know exactly what to do. It's just amazing.
MK: It is! Are there plans to expand the center to other Hopkins affiliated hospitals like Howard County General or other hospitals in general?
RD: We're certainly looking at expanding it in several ways.
First, we're trying to build a tool kit to help set up other oncology urgent care centers. So if somebody in another state decides they want to do this, we'll give them the tool kit with the things that they need to do. It would have the services that need to be provided, the traffic flow of patients and their disabilities, and so on. We're exploring the possibility of doing workshops or forming a consulting service. We want to package this so that anyone could set this up.
Second, we’d like to build a virtual urgent care system. For example, a Hopkins patient that lives 100 miles away is in distress. They could go to their local ER and through a virtual connection to the Hopkins oncology urgent care, interact with Hopkins doctors to provide the intervention that the patient needs. I'm excited about the possibilities.
There is also the possibility of having patients from other Baltimore area hospitals like Mercy Medical Center where you are being treated, coming to the Hopkins oncology urgent care. We could build an umbilical cord to their oncologists so they would be comfortable sending patients there. The urgent care center currently handles about 200 patients a month. While it is a good number, it is not so large that if the center were expanded, there could be one oncology urgent care center to treat all the cancer patients in Baltimore.
The complication is access to patient data, but I think with some cooperation, we could build a center that would serve the community, and that's a little speculation on my part. We need to take away some of the patients’ boundaries and not worry about what doctors they have and where they came from, but what are patients’ needs and interests. Ideally, a cancer specialist could say during your treatment: if you have a complicated problem in between appointments, you can go to this oncology urgent care center. They can do triage, they can help you, and they can get you where you need to go. And that to me would be a really, really wonderful way to do this.
MK: How did you feel when you heard you were nominated for a Community Cancer (C2) award?
RD: I was a bit blown away. In fact, it came as an email that could easily have gone into my trash basket. I thought, well, who would give me an award? I mean I was just helping; I’m just a volunteer. But I looked at it and I thought, well, there are so many people doing so many things. And I thought, I don't really need this award. I mean, it's nice to be nominated. But, let somebody else have it.
But I realized that the message about oncology urgent care is important enough. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to make oncology urgent care something that everybody knows about and everybody has. And so, I want to spread the idea. So my motivation was to accept the award and use the money to expand this concept so that it goes beyond Hopkins to other hospitals and other regions, and to build on the depth and scope to things like virtual urgent care which would really expand the broad spectrum of needs out there.
MK: What does it mean for you to have been awarded the president's award?
RD: I'm humbled by this. I'm happy with the urgent care center. It was a team that made that happen and I want the team to get recognized. I might have been a catalyst to get it started and helped a bit along the way. But the people who made it happen sometimes go unnoticed. And, of course, that's who those cancer providers are. They are unsung heroes.
MK: They are. My last question is, is there anyone you would like to acknowledge or thank for the award or just in general?
RD: There are two people: Amy Brown, an oncology nurse who worked with us every time we went to Hopkins. She nominated me for the award and she's just everything you want in an oncology nurse ; and Sharon Krumm, the director of nursing. She basically ran the hospital's oncology for the Kimmel Cancer Center. When she heard about my request for oncology urgent care, she just drew me right in there. We talked and talked about what we needed and what it would look like. Then she put together a team of people to make it happen. Without her, this clearly would never have happened. It was a risk because it had not been done before. She put together a really skilled group of nurses to help build it. Then she drew me in to help with some of the parts. She was really amazing. And, of course, my wife Janet and my daughter Samara. You know, I can't ever forget them.
MK: Any final words?
RD: The Patient and Family Advisory Council at Hopkins, I helped to start that. The voice of the patient is so important. People and medical professionals need to listen. They need to be open to that. Not just the practitioners, the doctors, but also the administrators and managers need to be open. Patients really know what treatment is about and what it's like; they know where the gaps are. If you listen to your patients, they will tell you how to make it better. It's not just better care and comfort, it's really better medicine. So if you are a doctor and you want better medicine and better outcomes, then the voice of the patient is really critical to make that happen.
MK: I hope you enjoy the award. What you are doing is making a huge impact on all cancer patients. Thank you so much for your work and passion to help cancer patients. Congratulations.
I have received information and materials from AstraZeneca. The opinions stated are my own. This is a sponsored post.
