A recent article in Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News highlights the need for translation services in healthcare settings.

Dr. Lisa Diamond. Photo by Richard DeWitt.

As MSK’s Dr. Lisa Diamond explains in the piece, physician familiarity with a language does not mean the doctor can communicate medical concepts with a patient in that idiom. By law, health care providers must offer professional language services to patients in need of them. But too often, translation comes from well-intentioned but untrained staff or a patient’s family members.

Dr. Diamond and colleagues published a study in 2016 in which they analyzed surgeons’ use of interpreters at a medical center in Boston. Although this hospital has a robust interpreter service, if the wait time for an interpreter were longer than 15 minutes surgeons were more likely to use their non-English language skills or a patient’s family members, including children, as interpreters.

In the Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News article, Dr. Diamond offers one potential solution: an opt-out, rather than an opt-in system, for interpreter services. This would require language preferences to be recorded in a patient’s health record so that every patient in need of interpretation had an interpreter assigned to them.

Learn more about MSK’s Language Assistance Program.

A recent Today Show segment features MSK’s Dr. Helena Yu, discussing successes of targeted lung cancer treatments.

Dr. Helena Yu, right, appearing on the Today Show.

These therapies are discussed in greater depth in a Medpage Today article that quotes MSK’s Dr. Alexander Drilon and an Oncology Nursing News interview with MSK’s Michael D. Offin. Immunotherapy and other new treatments are increasing survival in many patients, often by targeting specific, less-common genetic mutations like BRAF, RET, MET, and NTRK.

A Cancer Network article describes early research by MSK’s Dr. Alison Schram on solid tumors, including lung tumors, with NRG1 gene fusion. Therapy targeting this rare gene fusion in a patient with non-small cell lung cancer reduced the tumor size in the lung and in brain metastases.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review features MSK’s new InSight Care program. It is written by three members of the MSK team working on the program, Dr. Robert Daly, Abigail Baldwin-Medsker, and Wendy Perchick.

Left to right: Dr. Robert Daly, assistant attending, Thoracic Oncology Service, and clinical lead, InSight Care Program. Abigail Baldwin-Medsker, digital accelerator product manager, nurse leader for outpatient services, and clinical lead, InSight Care Program. Wendy Perchick, senior vice president of strategy and innovation.

The goal of InSight Care is to predict each chemotherapy patient’s risk of needing care between treatments through an analytical model based on previous patient observations, a patient-reported symptom survey, and a team of nurses and advanced practice professionals who use the platform to monitor and communicate with patients remotely.

Of the 106 patients in the program’s pilot, 14 (13%) required acute care at MSK, compared to 32% of similar patients not participating in the program. Patients report that they appreciate the quick, 24/7 care InSight Care provides them without their having to leave home. The authors plan to expand the pilot and continue to refine the tool.