Kelly Filchner Highlights Obstacles, Benefits of Transitioning Patients From Cancer Care to PCPs

Raising awareness on the involvement of primary care providers can assist cancer survivors in transitioning from oncology care, said Kelly Filchner, MSN, director at Fox Chase Cancer Center Partners.

Transcript

Are there challenges with getting patients to make the transition to their primary care provider (PCP)?

Educating patients from the beginning that their PCP is part of it, they get a little scared. You're going through cancer care, and you're followed so closely for perhaps a year at a time, maybe more than a year, depending on what your treatment is. Then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, you're a survivor, and now you're going to go do this, and it kind of scares people. So, we just need to make sure that they know that the PCP has been involved from the beginning. They know what's going on, and this is what we're going to do in oncology—we're going to take care of your side effects that you still might have, and we're going to make sure you're getting your CAT scans or whatever you need to follow your cancer, but your PCP is going to take care of making sure that even if you're a woman and you had a breast cancer, that you're still going for your colonoscopy, and other screening measures, as well as, taking care of exercise and obesity if that's an issue for that patient, along with their other comorbid conditions.