Huntsman at Home, The Only Care System of Its Type, Enters Eastern Utah

BEAR Press Release

At a special meeting in Price organized by the Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention program (BEAR) on April 7, it was announced that Huntsman at Home is ready to start operations in Eastern Utah. This will be a test program to see if care at home in rural areas can make fighting cancer not only more effective, but also can reduce pain, suffering and inconvenience for patients and their families.

While the advent of the program in the area is beginning, this does not guarantee that at some point the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah will be putting a permanent field facility in the area. However, there is hope that it could happen some day.

“The Huntsman Cancer Institute realizes that there are health care disparities between living in an urban area and a rural setting,” said Karen Titchener, who is the Director of Strategic Development for Huntsman. “So, we applied for grant money and the Huntsman family and the Helman Grant gave us a sum to use to do a three-year pilot program here. But, this isn’t about us coming in to take over, but for us to be an adjunct to all the great things that already go on in the area.”

Titchener went on to say that the institute will be working with Castleview Hospital and the Moab Regional Hospital, along with the home health care companies and charities that are already striving for better outcomes for cancer patients in Eastern Utah.

“We are trying to see what care we can bring closer to home, to stop patients from having to travel so much,” she stated. “As a team, we want to bring that care closer to people.”

She said that a lot of what they will be doing will be follow up for patients who have had or are having ongoing treatment at the center in Salt Lake.

“We will contact people that, for instance, have had chemotherapy and to see how they are managing the side effects,” Titchener explained. “By doing this, we can often prevent extra trips to the hospital because they will have had someone who helped them after they came back from the treatment.”

She added that because the money for this program is grant money, this service will not be an extra charge to people who do have ties to Huntsman.

“Our team will assess people and if they need three days of 24-hour care, for instance, we will pay for that care,” said Titchener.

Unfortunately, she did mention that any services provided by the grant will only apply to Huntsman Cancer Institute clients, not those who are going to other cancer treatment programs. Presently, Huntsman is providing services in Salt Lake to 168 people from the three-county area.

“Of that number, there are 50 of them that we could do something for right now,” she stated. “We plan on the program being functional in the area by early May.”

The team in the area presently will consist of Kim Dumas, who will be the nurse practitioner, and Rebecca Perkins, who will be the case manager for the area. The group is looking for more nurse practitioners who live in the area that might be interested in working with the program.

“We are heavily involved with CNS (Community Nursing Services) because in actuality, we are the only program in the entire world that works with an oncology program at home,” said Titchener.

The program has been operating in Salt Lake for some time and has had large success there. The idea of the test study is to gather data about the care, the support given and how it helps patients in the area, as compared to how patients fare in rural areas that don’t have that help.

“We are hoping that by the time a year goes by, we will have enough data to show the effectiveness of the program and that will help to extend it to other areas,” she said.

Titchener also said that beyond just care, some types of equipment or home devices (such as handrails or ramps at a home) that might be needed can also be paid for by the program.

“If those kinds of things are needed, we can get that taken care of immediately and we won’t have to wait to have it done,” she explained.

The idea is to totally address all the needs of patients and to bring the best care possible closer to home.

Perkins spoke about her role in the program and she said she will be “coordinating care” for patients in the community.

“I will be taking phone calls from patients about their needs and also working with community partners to help them,” she said. “Hopefully, we can reduce the number of unnecessary trips to the hospital by getting the help people need in their homes when those situations can be managed there.”

Titchener pointed out that Perkins will also try to manage trips patients must make, such as exploring ways “appointments can be done virtually” with the operations in Salt Lake.

Dumas said that she has been working with Huntsman at Home for three years and is the lead nurse practitioner for the program.

“My goal is to see people in their homes, to examine the situation there, to be sure they are getting the medications and the care they need, and to not only keep them from making extra trips to the Huntsman Institute, but from making extra trips to any hospital at all,” she stated. “We are here to augment the services people already have; we are not here to replace them.”

Dumas said the long-term effects of treatments can be very detrimental to people’s health and that the idea is to lessen those effects, which will bring a much better quality of life to those facing cancer and all that goes with it.

“The other part of it is that we want to go beyond managing their symptoms, but also we want to be there to assess what other kinds of community resources they may need that are available,” she explained. “So, our job is to not only be the eyes and ears of the oncologist who is treating the patients, but to be an advocate for the patients in the communities as well.”

Probably one of the crowning virtues of this program is to examine how things can be done so that patients get the best care, while not inconveniencing their lives and the lives of their loved ones who often have to take them to appointments, deal with symptoms and generally face things many have never dealt with before.

Titchener pointed out that in Moab, which is four hours from Salt Lake City, the EMT service there has a special grant that helps them to provide care for oncology patients, and that Huntsman will be working with them closely.

“My view has always been that we should never say no, but say how. Whatever is presented to us by patients and their situations, we want to work it out with the whole community for what works for them. We will push the boundaries as far as we can to give the best care that we can,” said Titchener.

For more information on the program, people in the three-county area can call (801) 213-6060.