Rewriting the AML Treatment Playbook: Tina Bhatnagar, DO

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has historically been one of oncology’s most difficult diagnoses to deliver, with limited treatment options, a grim prognosis, and conversations between physician and patient often ending in the same place: “There is nothing more we can offer you.” That reality, and the drive to change it, has defined the career of Bhavana “Tina” Bhatnagar, DO, associate professor of medicine at West Virginia University Cancer Institute at Wheeling Hospital and former director of hematology and medical oncology.

This week’s episode of Managed Care Cast is episode 2 of Director’s Cut, a new limited series from The American Journal of Managed Care^® featuring program leaders in hematologic cancer. She discusses how the hematologic malignancy landscape has been transformed over the course of her career, what that transformation means for patients in a rural, underserved clinical setting, and where the field is heading. She offers a grounded, evidence-anchored look at how far hematologic oncology has come, and how much further she intends to take it.

Bhatnagar traces her interest in blood cancers to early formative experiences that eventually deepened during her medical training. Rotating on leukemia floors as a trainee, she encountered a feature of hematologic oncology that distinguishes it from most other subspecialties: the extended inpatient admission, which creates an unusually sustained clinical relationship between physician and patient. That longitudinal exposure, she explains, allowed her to witness the full arc of acute illness, treatment response, and recovery—or its absence—in a way that few other training environments permit.

In the years since she entered practice at a time when AML was treated largely as a single disease entity, there has been a fundamental reconceptualization. AML is now understood as a collection of distinct diseases, with 10 approved drugs across 17 indications in the AML and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) space. “I’m very proud to say now that there’s much more that we can offer somebody with AML and ALL,” she says, “and those conversations look very different, which has been very gratifying to see, especially since I’m not even halfway through my career.”

Her ambitions extend beyond incremental survival gains. “Ultimately, I think what we want to do is give more people their life back,” she explains, “and we want to do it in a way that allows them to integrate back into their life without a lot of psychological and physical trauma from the treatment they got.”

During her tenure as director of hematology and medical oncology, a role she stepped down from in June 2025, Bhatnagar focused on 2 institutional priorities: elevating the standard of care delivery in a rural West Virginia community and expanding clinical trial access for a patient population that has historically lacked it. Addressing widespread misconceptions that trial participation represents experimentation or a last resort rather than a pathway to earlier access to emerging therapies was central to that effort.

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