Intro: ​Riverside Healthcare puts the health and wellness information you need well within reach.

Taylor Leddin-McMaster (Host): Hello, listeners. Thanks for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Taylor Leddin-McMaster. Joining me today is Kristin Carson, Director of Oncology and Infusion Services and Rheumatology Services, who's here to talk about comprehensive care at the Riverside Cancer Institute. Welcome.

Kristin Carson: Thank you.

Host: Before we get into the episode, we're going to take a quick break for a message about myChart.

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Host: And we're back. So, it's been a minute since you've been on the podcast. Can you tell us about your role at Riverside and what it entails?

Kristin Carson: Sure. So within my role, I supervise the management and the staff of the Oncology and Infusion Services in all of our locations. So, we have locations in Kankakee, Bourbonnais. Coal City, Frankfurt and Watseka. I assist them in their daily roles. They'll work with their teams and the strategic planning for all the continued growth and betterment of our practices.

Host: Wonderful. Now, I know you just hit a milestone of 20 years at Riverside.

Kristin Carson: I did.

Host: How have you seen the cancer program evolve in that time?

Kristin Carson: Well, in my role, I've only been in the Oncology field for about five years. I dealt with a lot of the patients prior to that in our infusion services, but really just took the Oncology departments on then. Within that time though, we've seen so much evolvement in our care for the patients, adding more players to our multidisciplinary team, as well as continually adding more and more treatment options for our patients and to ensure their best outcomes. It's really the best practices that we can do. It seems like almost monthly we are talking about new drugs and treatments to expand our care and to give our patients longer lives, even if they're living with cancer.

Host: Yeah, that's amazing. The Riverside Cancer Institute offers comprehensive care close to home. What does this mean?

Kristin Carson: What this means to me is that you can get the same care you would receive at an academic center in most cases without traveling an hour or more for that care. At Riverside Cancer Institute, we treat the whole patient. With our many team members, we provide complete care in the same-day treatments so patients don't have to make multiple trips for both Radiation and Medical-Oncology care. There may be a few services we can't provide, such as like bone marrow transplants or stem cell transplants. But in those cases, we'll refer the patients to places that can. And we can often give the preparation care and the aftercare when they're receiving those procedures.

Being close to home is so important, especially for patients and their families. Cancer is a difficult journey, but traveling through it for many appointments and treatments is sure not very conducive to good care when you're not feeling well.

Host: Definitely. Yeah. So, it's nice to have that in your backyard. You mentioned the team. I'm curious, this comprehensive care includes a multidisciplinary team and that expands beyond doctors and nurses. What are additional roles that make up this team?

Kristin Carson: So, we really have a great team to treat our patients physically, emotionally, financially, in every aspect of their care. Our team consists of, like you said, our providers and nurses, but we also have, of course, our radiation therapists. We have medical assistants, a navigator for cancer patients, pharmacists and pharmacy techs for both infusion and specialty oral chemotherapies. We have lab techs, social workers, a dietician, pastoral care, and authorization specialists, truly a robust team that can assist in meeting all of our patient's needs.

Host: That's awesome because when you think about what comes to mind as the doctor, but then you have to think about all the other steps that go along with that journey because it is a difficult one, like you said.

Kristin Carson: It really is. And there's so many other needs of patients, not just their cancer diagnosis.

Host: Right. Yeah. The Riverside Cancer Institute works across the campuses of Bourbonais, Coal City, Frankfurt, and Watseka. How do these campuses work together to ensure that comprehensive care?

Kristin Carson: Sure. So, most of our referrals come through one team and our navigator. That team then reviews the patient's records their information, and sees where they live. We try to provide their care closest to the patient's home to give them complete coverage and education on new drugs. All of our staff goes together and works at all of these sites. So, our pharmacy works together as a team. Our social workers, dietician, and pastoral care all travel to all the sites, and our management team travels to all the sites as well to ensure that we're all giving the same care at the same level. Continuity of care at all sites helps us to ensure the best possible outcomes for our patients, and that we're all practicing in the same manners.

Host: Before we continue our conversation, we're going to take a moment to talk about the importance of primary care.

At Riverside Healthcare, your primary care provider is dedicated to being in your corner, helping you and your family stay healthy and thrive. Find the right primary care provider for you at my rhc.net/acceptingnew. From annual screenings to well checks and everything in between, having a primary care provider that you can trust makes all the difference.

And we're back talking about the comprehensive care and multidisciplinary team at the Riverside Cancer Institute. So, sometimes you hear patients in other healthcare systems say that they had to one day go to one location for labs and then another day to a different location for treatment. How is Riverside's model different from that?

Kristin Carson: So within our cancer treatment sites, we have point-of-care testing for our lab with our own lab technician and equipment on site. So, what this means is that we can draw the patient's blood for them prior to their provider visits and prior to their treatments. This helps us obtain the results within an hour and determine if the patients can receive their treatment. Chemotherapies and immunotherapies can often affect the blood counts, and we want to make sure that we get those results quickly, can address any issues that may need to be corrected, and then decide if the treatment is safe for the schedule or if we need to do something different for the patients to help them recover to receive their next treatment.

It's really important that the patients are healthy enough to have those treatments as we don't want to drive their immune system down further, making them unable to tolerate those treatments and heal properly. Once we've determined if their treatment is safe, then we have our own onsite pharmacy and the pharmacy staff can immediately mix those drugs for infusion. This too helps to decrease their wait times. Often, patients in other sites have to have those medications transported from the other site, which can cause a very long wait time. We're very proud to minimize that wait time and provide this level of service all in the same-day. Many treatments are lengthy and at times leave patients not feeling well or very fatigued. We want to minimize their travel, their amount of appointments, and wait times so that they can heal and be the safest and have the best journey that they can while they are healing.

Host: So, that makes it more of a convenient kind of one-stop shop for patients. How much does the team play into that?

Kristin Carson: Our team works so well together. I'm very proud of how our team works, and they work quickly and seamlessly to help our patients. While on site for their treatments, the patients can also meet with the pharmacists, the social workers, the dieticians, without needing separate appointment times. This ensures that all of their needs are met, including if they need assistance with transportation or medical leave paperwork, or obtaining medications from specialty pharmacies, or learning about dietary needs if they're losing weight from their treatments. Our comprehensive team can assist in meeting those needs while the patients are on site, or even via phone if they're offsite, to help ensure that they are cared for in the best manner, in the most convenient way.

Host: There's often a thought that one needs to go north to Chicago to receive-- I'm using air quotes here-- "top-notch treatment." How do you respond to that?

Kristin Carson: I disagree. Within the Cancer Institute, we follow the NCCN guidelines for chemotherapies and the ASTRO guidelines for radiation therapy. Whether the patients are getting both treatments or just one treatment, we want to make sure that we're working at the highest level of care. So, what this means is that we're following the same national guidelines as academic centers and providing them that highest level of care. We have weekly protocol meetings to update any treatment plans, to change therapy plans to whatever is deemed best practice for cancer treatment based on national guidelines. Sometimes this means we're replacing old drugs with new and better drugs, or changing radiation treatment plans to more complex and complete treatment, utilizing our treatment modalities such as stereotactic surgery or brachytherapy to best treat the patients.

Cancer treatment guidelines are continually changing and improving, and we want to make quick changes to ensure top-level care for our patients in our communities. Riverside's administration is also really committed to cutting edge technologies and therapies in cancer treatment, and I'm proud to say that we continue to change and improve those technologies and guidelines in a quick manner so that we can best treat our patients.

Host: Yeah. You mentioned how everything's always evolving and it might be hard to predict the future, but what do the next few years look like for the Riverside Cancer Institute?

Kristin Carson: I am really encouraged with the treatments that we're seeing for cancer care. As I said prior, it seems like there's continually new things coming out for treatments and for even the most complex cancers. In the past, some cancers have been completely untreatable with new medications and radiation treatments many of these complex cancers are now treatable. Some of the cancer diagnoses is we've seen, you know, patients had a diagnosis where they may only live six months as a projected time. And now, we're seeing them live four and five years.

And within that time, more drugs are coming out and evolving, and we're able to then give them more treatments. And even if it doesn't put them in remission, they can live with high quality life for many, many years. I'm excited to see how more advances come with immunotherapies and chemotherapies alike.

Host: Awesome. Is there anything else on this subject you'd like listeners to know about?

Kristin Carson: Yeah. Our complex team is here to serve our community and patients and their families. You really don't have to travel to an academic center to receive the best treatments and you can stay close to home. I'm proud to say that many times patients will go for second opinions at academic centers, and those providers will tell them we would do the exact same thing. You might as well receive your treatment close to home. Within our centers, our patients are family and we are family, and we take care of them as such.

We take pride in convenience and comfort and top-level care. And at Riverside Cancer Institute, you're not just a number, you're not just another diagnosis, you're not just a treatment. You're truly our family. And our teams do everything in our power to give you the best outcomes and care. Our patients are valued and we have so many people here to help you cope, grieve, heal, and we celebrate big when we have wins with a lot of compassion. Each and every patient is important, and that is the care that we give the patients, and that they should expect to receive. I'm proud of our team. I'm proud to serve our communities in this role.

Host: Well, thank you so much for the work that you and your team do. Unfortunately, cancer is something that has affected pretty much everybody, whether personally or a loved one. So, having people that care and are encouraged to take care of that patient are really special, so thank you. And thank you for being here today.

Kristin Carson: Thank you.

Host: And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast with Kristin Carson, Director of Oncology and Infusion Services and Rheumatology Services, and your host Taylor Leddin-McMaster. To learn more about the services provided by the Riverside Cancer Institute, visit my rhc.net/cancer or call 815-933-9660.