HJNO Jul/Aug 2021

INSIDE LOUISIANA’S WAR ON CANCER 24 JUL / AUG 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS between Mary Bird and our partners to provide a seamless experience for patients as they’re navigating from the Mary Bird environment of care to our hospital part- ners’ environments of care and maneuver through that in a seamless way. That’s our goal, and we think that taking that approach provides the best experience for patients — provides the best outcome for patients in a way that is efficient and cost-effective. Editor Mary Bird recently ended a relation- ship with St. Tammany Health System on the Northshore that will be taken over by Och- sner. Will Mary Bird Perkins be leaving the Northshore market? Fontenot Absolutely not. We’ve been on the Northshore for more than 20 years, and there was little or no organization of can- cer care services or programs that existed materially on the Northshore before we got there 20 years ago. The Mary Bird Perkins doctors were really the founding members of the cancer care community on the North- shore. We’re very proud of that. We’ve been in that community for a long time, and we’re going to be in that community for a very long time. We have deep roots in the Northshore marketplace. We enjoy a tremendous amount of support from the community. For the reasons that I mentioned earlier, the organization was founded 50 years ago with the intention of serving as a commu- nity resource. Every community that we’re in today, in every marketplace that we serve, we are there because we were invited to go there by the community. We have not planted a flag in the ground in any market- place. We’re there, because the community wants us to be there. And, for those reasons, we have built and earned and garnered and benefited from perception and recogni- tion from people in the communities that we serve as being their community cancer center. I don’t expect that to change in the Northshore, in Baton Rouge or in any other marketplace that we’re in. Editor Do you have an announcement about the Northshore facility? Fontenot Yes, our plans presently on the Northshore are focused on pursuing the same mission that we’ve pursued on the Northshore since we’ve been there, and that’s improving survivorship and lessen- ing the burden of cancer in any way that we can meaningfully do that in the communi- ties that we’re in. In Covington, that means, as we are moving forward, building a closer relation- ship with Northshore Oncology Associates (NOA) — Jack E. Saux, III, MD, James E. Car- rinder, DO, FACP, and FaizanMalik, MD, who have been on the Northshore for as long as we’ve been on the Northshore and taking care of cancer patients — now furnishing in partnership with NOA, medical oncology, pharmacy, infusion and laboratory services 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,