A Close Look at Clinical Trials in Oncology and Beyond: Looking Toward the Future

In this episode of OncChats: A Close Look at Clinical Trials in Oncology and Beyond, Christina Brennan, MD, MBA, FACRP and Richard D. Carvajal, MD, of Northwell Health and Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, discuss the importance of incorporating the patient voice into clinical trial processes, highlighting their partnership with Press Ganey to gather patient feedback through validated surveys to improve patient experience and retention, while also reflecting on the growth and future of clinical trials at Northwell.

Brennan: I love that. I’ll just wrap up here [by saying] this really applies to all of our research programs. I know that I’ve talked about it throughout the discussion today, but I really focus on the patient voice, and I’m trying to bring the patient voice to a patient choice. We partnered with Press Ganey, and they’re pretty well known in the healthcare world [with regard to] patient satisfaction scores. I scratched my head because we would sit at conferences for years and people would say, “Well, let’s ask the patients. What do we think the patients will want?” And maybe we did that on a 1:1 basis, but we never did it with validated surveys.

So, what better company to partner with than Press Ganey? They’ve been around for 40 years and have experience in this space. We don’t [always] ask our clinical trial patients what we might ask [our regular] patients, [questions like,] How was the lunch in the cafeteria? If they’re with us for the day, we want to know, is there something happening along their journey that we can [improve or] rectify to make sure that they’re going to stay in the clinical trial? [We want to] hear from them—from their point of entry of enrollment, throughout their journey, and then again, at the exit point.

I’m excited about the pilot that we’re doing and participating in with Press Ganey because I really want to find answers on how we can improve things for our patients; [this is ultimately why we do] everything we do every day. I’m excited about clinical trials in the industry, in Northwell, working with you, watching our programs grow through our workforce, our process, and our technology.

We’ve definitely talked about [the latter]; we need to catch up. I feel like healthcare is always behind in technology. Why can we do everything with banking, [for example,] and we’re so delayed in everything else? [Regardless,] it has certainly been a pleasure having this conversation with you and I’m excited about the future, Dr Carvajal.

Carvajal: Me too. Thank you, Dr Brennan. This was a fantastic conversation.