Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and incoming medical director at Thyme Care, spoke on how her organization’s tech platform incorporates social determinants of health (SDOH) in care navigation to ensure high quality care and treatment.
Thyme Care’s tech platform prospectively identifies patients who have health-related social needs and leverages electronic patient-reported outcomes to periodically check in on patients to ensure the delivery of high quality care and treatment, said Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and incoming medical director at Thyme Care.
Transcript
How do Thyme Care’s care navigation strategies account for race, income, and other social determinants of health when personalizing care to each respective patient?
So, Thyme Care’s whole-person approach to care navigation takes into account the important role that social determinants of health have in a patient's life that can impact their access to high quality care, their ability to pay for care, etc. Factors like their geographic location, social and financial circumstances, race, ethnicity, all can have a tremendous impact on a patient's ability to receive high quality care and treatment.
One example that comes to mind was a study that I read that actually came out of my training institution, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, led by my colleague and friend Bobby Daly, that showed that a well designed remote monitoring program led to a near 50% reduction in the risk for inpatient admission or emergency department visit. But the catch is that you have to have a smartphone, and not everyone has access to a smartphone or high speed internet. And that's just like one example of many about how social determinants of health can have an impact on patient care.
So, I would say Thyme Care does a few things that are enabled by its unique tech platform. So, one, through systematic processes that undergird enrollment and onboarding, Thyme Care’s navigators are able to prospectively identify patients who have a health-related social need, rather than react to needs that can arise over the course of treatment, which as everyone in this audience knows, can manifest in a drop in medication adherence, missed clinic visits, reduced time on treatment, increased acute care utilization, and increased mortality.
Thyme Care also leverages electronic patient-reported outcomes to periodically check in on patients, and those can be customized and are customized to a patient's journey and where they are on it. So, it's not the same assessment for say folks who are on adjuvant therapy vs who are on therapy with palliative intent or who are on survivorship.
It also leverages both regional and national resources. For example, resources on community-based organizations, grant assistance programs, or copay assistance programs, all of which are pulled in directly onto this tech platform so that care navigators don't even have to leave it to find resources that they might want to connect patients to. Resources about transportation, food insecurity, everything that are currently available.
Standard Criteria for Loss of Ambulation Needed in DMD
April 19th 2024A recent study suggests the differences between ambulation definitions for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) can impact the identification of ambulant vs nonambulant individuals, and standard criteria across settings are needed.
Read More
Overcoming Employment Barriers for Lasting Social Impact: Freedom House 2.0 and Pathways to Work
April 16th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our second episode, in which we learn all about Freedom House 2.0 and the Pathways to Work program.
Listen
Early Involvement Critical in Treating Immunotherapy-Induced Overlap Syndrome
April 19th 2024A series of case studies reveals the importance of early diagnosis and involvement of special teams of clinicians when dealing with potential cases of overlap syndrome, which encompasses myocarditis, myasthenia gravis, and immune checkpoint inhibitor–related myositis.
Read More
Making Giant Strides in Maternity Health Through Baby Steps
April 9th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are kicking off a special month-long podcast series with our strategic alliance partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our first episode, which is all about the Baby Steps Maternity Program and its mission to support women throughout every step of their pregnancy journey.
Listen
Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
Read More
Standard Criteria for Loss of Ambulation Needed in DMD
April 19th 2024A recent study suggests the differences between ambulation definitions for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) can impact the identification of ambulant vs nonambulant individuals, and standard criteria across settings are needed.
Read More
Overcoming Employment Barriers for Lasting Social Impact: Freedom House 2.0 and Pathways to Work
April 16th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our second episode, in which we learn all about Freedom House 2.0 and the Pathways to Work program.
Listen
Early Involvement Critical in Treating Immunotherapy-Induced Overlap Syndrome
April 19th 2024A series of case studies reveals the importance of early diagnosis and involvement of special teams of clinicians when dealing with potential cases of overlap syndrome, which encompasses myocarditis, myasthenia gravis, and immune checkpoint inhibitor–related myositis.
Read More
Making Giant Strides in Maternity Health Through Baby Steps
April 9th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are kicking off a special month-long podcast series with our strategic alliance partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our first episode, which is all about the Baby Steps Maternity Program and its mission to support women throughout every step of their pregnancy journey.
Listen
Government agencies have created an online portal for the public to report potential anticompetitive practices in health care; there are changes coming to the “boxed warning” section for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR T) to highlight T-cell blood cancer risk; questions about the safety of obesity medications during pregnancy have arisen in women on them who previously struggled with fertility issues.
Read More
2 Commerce Drive
Cranbury, NJ 08512