Dear Colleagues,
Our Strategic Plan builds upon the successes of the Division and addresses the challenges we face as a result of the significant changes taking place in the health system and in healthcare. Our strategic plan includes four goals related to patient centeredness, engagement, innovation and economic sustainability. Focusing on our goals will advance our Division as a continuing national leader in hematology/oncology patient care, a premiere setting for learning and mentoring, and a global leader in developing highly visible discoveries that truly impact patient’s lives.
Our goals
To promote our mission, the Hematology/Oncology Division has committed to four goals that will serve as the focus of our activities and investments over the next three to five years:
- Patient Centeredness
Lead the nation in the delivery of state-of-the-art, compassionate care that optimizes quality of life and patient outcomes.
- Engagement
Expand and enhance collaboration, communication, accountability, professional development and ownership.
- Innovation
Drive innovation by translating new discoveries into practice.
- Economic Sustainability
Create a nimble and fiscally sustainable and successful Division.
Patient Centeredness
Lead the nation in the delivery of state-of-the-art, compassionate care that optimizes quality of life and patient outcomes.
Rationale
Patient-focused care that leverages our unique strengths as an integrated health system ensures both quality patient care, high value care and provider satisfaction. A core tenet is that the standard of care for our patients always includes state-of-the-art clinical research. Technically sophisticated care and compassionate care are not at odds in our system. We are also experts in thoughtful, empathic end-of-life care when our best treatments and technologies have met their limits.
Supporting Strategies and Tactics:
- Drive excellence in patient care in the out-patient and in-patient settings
- Create networked approach to individualized patient care
- Incorporate research into clinical care at all locations
- Develop infrastructure for patients and providers (internal and external) to identify available clinical trials, assess eligibility and enroll patients quickly and efficiently.
- Develop a process to increase the availability of clinical trials at all locations and thereby realize part of the goal to establish a truly integrated Division.
- Bring new knowledge and new technologies to the delivery of care
Engagement
Expand and enhance collaboration, communication, professional development and ownership.
Rationale
Our people are our greatest asset. Our faculty, nurses and staff who pioneer discoveries, teach our trainees and care for our patients are essential to support and advance our three-part mission (clinical care, research and education). We must be able to recruit and retain top talent. We must be able to increase diversity in our faculty. Greater engagement enhances faculty, nurse and staff productivity and retention, improves the patient experience and outcomes, and enables the Division to accelerate research and provide outstanding education. Engagement across practice sites will lead to better coordination of care and improved research collaborations.
Supporting Strategies and Tactics:
- Refresh Division organizational structure to reflect the current size
- Establish a strong system-wide identity to reinforce our sense of community
- Improve faculty and staff career development
- Optimize ability of faculty to balance research, clinical, and personal time
- Increase diversity and URMs in the hematology/oncology fellowship and the faculty
Innovation
Drive innovation by translating new discoveries into practice.
Rationale
Penn is already a leader in transforming the care of patients with cancer and serious blood disorders. But the stakes are now higher than ever with the insights and promise from recent basic biomedical discoveries in cancer genetics and immunology. Turning this veritable explosion of information into useful therapies for patients will require taking risks in an entrepreneurial, dynamic and competitive research environment. This will almost certainly involve new funding and collaboration models, strategic partnerships and methods for transmitting knowledge to learners, payers, patients and funding agencies. Threats to innovation are everywhere; they’ve always been there. Our campus is different from that of many of our peers, however, and constitutes a uniquely diverse and strong academic ecosystem, including resources we’ve barely tapped in the past. As members of this campus and community, Penn Medicine, the Abramson Cancer Center and the Division are uniquely poised to continue to make new cancer and other biomedical discoveries and bring them to our own patients and patients throughout the rest of the world.
Supporting Strategies and Tactics:
- Expand our deep tradition of conducting the highest impact trials, the ones that change practice.
- Create an environment that allows for new, translatable discoveries.
Economic Sustainability
Rationale
Delivering high value services that achieve quality outcomes will strengthen our reputation in the market. Hematology/Oncology has grown rapidly in recent years and achieved a number of key financial and quality goals. However, market and payer changes require a renewed and ongoing focus on sustainability, growth, and ability to support the Division’s mission.
Supporting Strategies and Tactics:
- Grow program volumes
- Deliver highest value care
- Improve long-term financial outlook for the non-clinical missions
Concluding Comments
Our work on the
Strategic Plan has just begun. With this plan, the Hematology/Oncology Division’s forward looking process builds on the lessons and achievements of our half century as a Division. While no one underestimates the challenges in these goals, there is an overriding belief that over the next 5 years, we can and will transform the outlook for patients with cancer and serious blood disorders. With this plan we will foster inclusion, engagement and professional development of all members of the Division across our practice locations.