Testimonials

As typical for this conference, I am motivated to continue to integrate my palliative practice more fully into the fiber of our cancer center activities, and to advance ways of measuring the impact of the work we do.

There is so much to help us do better at survival in cancers, and so many more new treatments out there, but the one thing that is often overlooked is – is it the right thing to do for the patient? So I was thrilled to see that MOQC is focusing on hospice. It’s so under looked in oncology these days.

I hope we get the opportunity to continue to work toward getting integrated palliative care for our patients in rural MI.

As an Oncology Nurse Navigator, I meet with patients soon after they receive a new cancer diagnosis. One of the strong messages from this program was that Palliative Care can and should be provided during every encounter by every member of the team. I will learn more about providing Palliative Care and incorporate care and communication techniques into every encounter.

MOQC has sponsored some great performance improvement projects over the years that have moved care forward for our patients. We participated in the Oral Chemotherapy ESAS project and continue to use this tool today to assess our patient’s adherence and side effect profiles. MOQC does a terrific job of providing tools and suggestions for how to improve quality of care and works with us to review our documentation to ensure we are meeting national oncology quality standards.

I work with Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care. It seems that the increased goals and resulting conversation in regards to hospice referrals and care might get more people more help at end of life. I would love to be part of increasing utilization of hospice services for cancer patients.

We appreciate MOQC’s persistence, effort, and time. Through MOQC, we get to share our experience and learn from other practices in our region. Hope to see you in person next time.

Each meeting, we share, we collaborate, and we celebrate the success that’s being done around the state. I feel that MOQC really supports the practice, which then allows us to go back and support the patient.

As a social worker, I love that MOQC realizes the importance of bringing social workers to the table for the discussion about quality and care of patients.

Please consider talking with your family and loved ones about death and dying and hospice and palliative care now, long before you need to. Patients can make decisions of what they actually want so that family members don’t have to guess. I highly recommend getting into hospice whenever you are eligible and taking advantage of all the services to help patients and families. They are experts! Hospice isn’t about “giving up,” it’s about changing your goals to live the best and most comfortable life you can until the end.

I was fortunate enough to become a member. I was honored to be asked.  It was and is an honor to be a member of POQC (Patient and Caregiver Oncology Quality Council).

I felt honored and hopeful about joining POQC. My term with the Cancer Center’s Council was ending after nearly six years and I was looking for ways to continue working with the cancer community. My husband received his cancer care at UM and I wanted to find a meaningful way to continue to give back in some way, however small it might be. POQC has more than met that wish.

I’m fortunate to have had many volunteer opportunities in my life – especially during the past several years as I edged toward and moved fully into retirement. The most rewarding and fulfilling of that volunteer work has been as a member of POQC. The reasons are many, but most notable has been having a valued – truly valued – patient voice for cancer care.

I will use the information presented to improve my conversations with patients related to palliative care, integration of palliative care into the management of oncology patients and improve the care delivered to my patients through improving my practice’s performance on my state and national quality measures.

MOQC is at the forefront of quality care and prioritizes issues that most affect patients. Their resources are top notch and we appreciate the support they provide to help us improve care.

I think high tides raise all ships – the measures we review and compare all help us do better even if it is competitive or not wanting to see your own practice not meeting the metric. I feel the collaborative group effort, even though some of us are “competitors,” makes us all share best practices to improve care across the state.

MOQC makes an impact in many areas of cancer care, helping our health systems obtain resources to bring programs off the ground. It also allows the collaboration of organizations to work together and identify what is working well to share best practices.

There are aspects of MOQC that bring in other voices that we don’t, as clinicians, sometimes hear in that way because we see them in the patient exam room. But to have patient representation at MOQC also helps because it allows us to get some feedback, as clinicians, from the group that we need to address.

And I did not have this when I was in practice in Pennsylvania. This type of initiative didn’t exist. So I’ve seen MOQC evolve over the years, and I have to say that at times in my monthly practice meetings, I will go back and bring the data. I show the aggregate data to my partners and say, “Listen, here’s where we’re failing. Here’s where we’re doing well, and we need to make changes.