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start to fnish. That way, patients always have someone to contact with questions, and they know someone is there to walk them through the process.

The group is helping individual-ize care for each patient’s unique diagnosis and personal needs.

a t e a m e f f o r t

“It really requires our doctors to come together and work for the patient’s beneft,” said Kevin Kim, M.d., medical oncologist at Koote-nai cancer center. “It helps to have everyone on the same page, telling the patient the same thing.” At each meeting, the group dis-cusses two to five new patients, examines their lab work and im-

ages from any MRI or cT scans the patient may have had, and gives updates on other patients that are further along in the treatment process.

“I’m currently following 54 pa-tients through this program,” Schmidt said. “This is uncharted territory for Kootenai, but I think it will catch on.”

In the future the group would like to include primary care physicians in the process.

“If a patient has a lung nodule, we would like to follow that on our board rather than having the primary care physician do it,” dr. Kim said. “not all primary or fam-ily care physicians feel comfortable monitoring lung nodules or tumors,

so we would like them to send that patient to us.”

W h e r e W e W I l l g o dr. Kim hopes that the working group structure will expand to other areas of care, such as breast cancer, head and neck tumors and cancer, and gastrointestinal treatment. This would involve coordinating the doc-tors in these areas and assigning a nurse navigator to each group. “I’m here specifcally for the pa-tient,” Schmidt said. “I think having me around and facilitating every-thing releases a lot of tension for our patients. I think it empowers them, because I’m not telling themwhat to do; rather, they’re asking me ques-tions and tellingme what they need.”

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