Lisa Blue:
Hello, and welcome to Happy Hour, Happy Patients. Today, we’re honored to host a distinguished guest whose commitment to patient care and innovative approaches are reshaping the landscape of pulmonary medicine. Joining us is Doctor. Suman Sinha, a trailblazing pulmonary and critical care specialist currently serving as the Chief of Pulmonary Medicine at CHRISTUS Trinity Clinic at CHRISTUS Health. Doctor Sinha’s multifaceted expertise extends as the director of the Lung Nodule Program and as the cancer liaison physician For his local health system, his dedication to enhancing patient outcomes is evident through his service on numerous health care boards, Including the CHRISTUS Trinity Clinic Physician Board, the Northeast Texas Public Health District Board, and the Council on Health Care Quality At the Texas Medical Association, Doctor. Sinha’s journey into medicine began in Lansing, Michigan and has been characterized by an insatiable pursuit of knowledge. With a diverse educational background, including a bachelor’s in biochemistry from the University of California San Diego, Master’s degree in business and molecular biology, and his medical degree from Saint George’s University School of Medicine, He embodies a fusion of expertise that transcends traditional medical boundaries. Board certified in internal medicine, Pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine, doctor Sinha’s passion for patient care is not only reflected in his clinical proficiency, But also in his proactive engagement with technology to operationalize lung cancer screening engagement and incidental nodule tracking.
Lisa Blue:
Beyond his remarkable professional achievements, Doctor. Sinha finds joy with his beautiful family and appreciates sports, literature, and music. We’re so happy to have you. Welcome Doctor. Sinha.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s great to be here, and thank you for your kind words and introduction.
Lisa Blue:
So I know I just gave some background into who you are professionally, a little bit, who you are personally. What’s something else we should know about you? Something you’d like to share with our listeners. This could be personal or professional.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Thank you. Boy, I, I would like to say that I have some kind of redeeming talent or quality, but I really don’t. I’m just a Very middle of the road, average person, and, I would say the latest thing right now is, I’m becoming a Novice pickleball player. So, I had my 1st lesson yesterday, and we just bought Some pickleball paddles, and my wife and I are joining together to play with other couples at this point. So we’re really having a good time with pickleball, so that’s my new thing.
Lisa Blue:
I love it. How fun. Good for you for carving some time out to learn something new and and have something for you and Julie to do. I love that.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Yes.
Lisa Blue:
So let’s jump right in. You know, in your role, you’ve really pioneered the use of technology to Enhance patient engagement, particularly in lung cancer screening. Can you share with us and with our listeners some specific ways that technology Has really changed healthcare, in your experience?
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Oh, that’s an excellent question. It’s a broad question. If you look at technology in what we’ve done with diagnostics and therapeutics across all fields of healthcare. The advances have just been tremendous. Okay, and I think one of our latest examples for example was, the advent of new types of vaccinations, for example, for the COVID nineteen pandemic and if you if you look at how technology was utilized and the collaboration between say the private sector the technologic world and even even the public sector in creating these vaccines it had a tremendous impact in terms of numbers of lives Saved, I believe. And I think that, you know, that would be a glaring example, but the same is true for rheumatologic diseases, COPD, asthma, cancer, as you know, we’ve been talking about. And so, both the diagnostics and therapeutics And prevention, I think that technology is just really starting to accelerate in our fields.
Lisa Blue:
So, you know, when you think about that, you know, there there are so many different ways, and obviously, you know, just coming off of a pandemic in the last Couple of years, we we can see it a little bit, you know, with with a bit more of a focus. Right? In your neck of the woods, so to speak, what tools, what technology tools Do you think have had the biggest impact for really engaging the patient population maybe you’re serving, especially in chronic pulmonary care?
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Absolutely, so in pulmonary you know one of the things that I’m the most excited about right now is the Use of biologics and asthma for example. We see a lot of asthma. There Crossovers between asthma and other diseases such as gastroesophageal reflux, bronchiectasis, COPD. We’ve had folks that have come in that have had asthma like symptoms and severe asthma like symptoms for years, And, now we have these new medications beyond inhalers, these biologic medications that we’re using, Anti eosinophilic, anti IgE. And we have seen years of symptoms resolve within just several days. And so, it’s just, it’s a game changer, and it’s one of the most exciting things that I’ve come across in the last 23 years of practice as a specialist, so I’m super excited about that. Cancer care, very similar. You know, when we look at cancer, we talk about lung cancer, Lisa, you and me and Ryan and everybody at ProviderTech.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
And, I think the changes in cancer care have certainly come a long way, Especially, you know, with the combination modalities, of using immunotherapy, in cancer care. So we’re really starting to see lives extended. When I look at this problem in cancer care, And I think when it’s looked at by my colleagues, we can’t help but notice that the addition of New therapeutics in cancer care certainly has added weeks to a patient’s life, Months to a patient’s life and now for the first time with combined modality therapy and immunotherapy we’re seeing that People are actually living with advanced stage disease longer than months, and it’s going into the years now. You know how excited I am about it to have been managing advanced stage cancer, lung cancer folks Now in their 5th, 6th year of life, whereas before the diagnosis would have been much worse. So even with that said, we’re striving for more. Right? So when we look at our paradigm in lung cancer, for example, we know that lung cancer itself is the greatest cancer killer, for lack of a better word, than any other cancer in our country and in the world as well. So, the often quoted fact is that there are more Lung cancer deaths per year in the United States than there are breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer deaths all combined And so, that’s usually our lead off statement when we’re trying to get the attention of folks to help us with this huge problem. Really the reason for that up until this point was the idea that All of the other cancers besides lung cancer, had screening programs.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So, we screened for breast cancer with mammography. We screen for colon cancer with colonoscopy. We screen for prostate cancer with PSA levels, And the pendulum has shifted in terms of what the value is of those screening programs. Right? So over the years, All of the different organizations have either supported or retracted support for those programs Based on new information. So what do I mean by that? Well, you know, you have to screen a lot of folks To actually save 1 life. And so if you ask yourself, what is the number needed to screen, for example, one, To save 1 patient from breast cancer death, that number could be somewhere close to 1,000 people. So imagine the number of folks going through screening to save 1 life. Imagine the number of false positives, A false positive could lead to a false or an unnecessary biopsy in the amount of anxiety and the other Confounding problems and pressures that come along with a false positive.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
And then, of course, you have to think about the expense of these things as well. So that’s why the pendulum has sort of gone back and forth. Now if you’re that 1 person That had breast cancer and said 999 other people had to be screened in order to save my life, I would be all all in for that. You know, everybody goes out there and gets screened to save me. So this is the kind of thing that That as we move forward, in healthcare, as we’re looking at Prevention screening Therapeutics, you know, we’re gonna be asking ourselves. How do we become smarter? How do we have better screening? How do we use combined screening modalities rather than just 1 form of screening per disease process and I think that These are the sort of the things that are going to be facing us as we move forward. And without a healthy marriage between healthcare and technology, We’re not going to be able to accomplish that right so I don’t want to ramble too much so just cut me off at any point but of course you know you and I met over the huge problem of lung cancer right? And so we had a tremendous project together and I’m so excited about the results of our project and hope to talk about some of that a little bit more today So I’ll keep going unless you stop me because you
Lisa Blue:
I would actually love that. I was gonna say, you know, we’ve had this great opportunity in the past to partner on a really exciting and innovative project. Why don’t you? Why don’t you speak more to that?
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Sure, sure, so in looking at my sub specialty, You know pulmonary medicine and in looking at our problem sets of lung cancer, which is the biggest problem in terms of cancer mortality. That problem was big because we didn’t have a screening program for lung cancer. Okay, and so The, you know the scientists and epidemiologists of our field devised a large study Called the National Lung Screening Trial, and there have been others as well. But essentially what we were able to discover is that There is a risk reduction of mortality if you screen for lung cancer using low dose CAT scan when compared to plain chest x-ray. So low dose CAT scan started to become popularized in the standard of care. So it was supported by the United States Preventative Task Force, and it was supported by CMS, and now we’ve got lung cancer screening With Low Dose CAT Scan to help save lives, and it turns out that the number needed to screen To save 1 life in Lung cancer is higher or better I should say than than the other screening programs, so it takes about one Screen, I’m sorry one life saved for 3 23 screens which is one of the better programs I really think that that number is going to be even much better than that When it comes to Low Dose CAT scan, if you look at subgroups, if you look at high geospatial areas where lung cancer is more prevalent, For example, in Northeast Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, the Carolinas, these are areas where there’s such high smoking That I think that you’re gonna need to screen way less than that in order to save a life. I think that number is gonna be less than a100 Quite frankly, in some of these high smoking areas. Mhmm. So in thinking about this problem, I got a text message from my dentist who knows that I’m not good at making my Dental Hygiene Appointments and my dentist was smart enough to implement a text messaging Program in his practice that would alert us to to is when when our our next Dental appointment was, okay, so it gets us in for good dental hygiene, and then it makes sure that he gets the bills paid because his patients actually show up This is interesting.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Not showing up, and, it actually works. And so probably 3 days before my dental appointment, I would get a text message, And I would respond c to confirm, and then I would get another one the night before, And then I would get another one the hour before my my, my dental appointment. And I am well known for forgetting to make appointments an hour before, Because I get involved in doing something else, and then, I miss my appointment. And so, it worked out great for me. I started to think that maybe we can improve lung cancer engagement in lung cancer adherence with a text message protocol as well. So that’s when I started to go on to the Internet and to look around and this is somewhere around 20 18 2019 and I came across the work of provider tech and I cold called you folks and just asked you if you would be interested in doing a project to help with lung cancer Engagement and adherence through text messaging since you guys had expertise in this area. You know your expertise better than anybody, of course, but I was so impressed with what you folks had already done in colorectal cancer screening With fecal blood, cold blood testing, and you had proven good results. And it was it’s so interesting how you found that, various types of patients, Those that had dropped off the map and then you are just sort of trying to re engage them versus patients that had been very Good about following up with colorectal screening, but there were significantly different rates of response to the text message Based on previous levels of engagement of these particular types of patients.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So that’s kind of where the story began and where we looked at developing a similar workflow In the lung cancer screening space and and the rest is history, we were able to do a project together and you know I’d love to share some results you later in the call as well as we’re finalizing the report on on the project itself.
Lisa Blue:
Yeah. I actually do remember our initial phone call when we started talking about what that could look like. You know, I think going back to your example of the reminder that you got from your dentist office, you know, that’s something that you were familiar with. You were familiar with Why you would have a cleaning, why we’d have that prophylactic visit with your dentist. You know, whereas The population that we were attempting to engage, maybe they weren’t familiar with lung cancer screening. And so, you know, as you know, we defined a protocol that gave them some information on why it was so important for them. And so, you know, gave, some, easy to con easy to consume information. We frequently ask questions about lung cancer screening, right? How do you get the screening completed? How, you know, how do you access it? Who’s eligible? Why should you get it? Right.
Lisa Blue:
And so some of those those questions that we anticipated that population might, might might have about, you know, why we’re reaching out to them, and then obviously giving them the tools to easily communicate with your team to proceed to the next steps onto making that that first, you know, that initial visit for a shared decision making. So I would love to hear you speak a little bit about, you know, that ability to, you know, what was your patient’s experience with us reaching out in that way? You know, we know that There’s always going to be the, there’s always going to be a space that we need that human interaction, that we need to talk to our doctor, and we did ask those questions. But we also know that there are, there’s a lot of space in between that. Maybe we just need a little bit of information as human beings to guide us on that path. And so, you know, how do you think we, you know, through that project That that we designed and and developed together. How do you think we did striking that balance between the, you know, Providing patients some information and and steps on how to reach your team using text messaging, and and still, you know, really maintaining that human touch. What were some of the, maybe, experiences that they shared with you? Or, You know, even just the, you know, the overall feeling that, You know, as you spoke to those patients that we use that way to engage.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Yes. Yes. I’m smiling because I’m I’m remembering, Lisa, some of the text messages that we received back in the in the broad, You know, sort of, types of responses that we received, you know, and and it it ranged anywhere from, You know, hey, you get off of my cloud, you know, in in in certain certain, you know, specific terms that we wouldn’t wanna We’ve got a podcast. Right? So we had folks that were, like, what in the world are you doing? You know, texting me and, You know, don’t ever do it again. You know, we had responses like that, and then we had other responses on the other end of the spectrum, which were, You know, hey, I’ve been thinking about this for for some time, and I’ve been hearing about it, and I’d I’d really like to get going on this right now. And so, yeah, we did see a broad range of these kinds of things. One of the things, the powerful tools, That that provider tech was able to create for our program was the two way text messaging. And I think at some point, we realized that it was wise for us to engage with them on a more personal level.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So we started to look at some of the women who had gone through Mammography for breast cancer and we included that language in our text. Right. So as the cadence of texting began And people had not either opted in or opted out. We came back with a next text that said, hey, Just as you have performed mammography to look for breast cancer screening, we would like to to also offer you Low dose CAT scan, not in those words, but but the idea was was to get them to to understand that there was a parallel, and they’ve already participated in screening before. I think that was a really powerful tool. We saw folks turn very quickly. The same was true for colon screening. We could use the same thing with the men with PSA, say that you’ve you’ve done this before.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
But that personalized the experience And it was you know something that I think touched their thought process on preventative care Screening and prevention. I think you helped us with that. We were limited To some degree by some of the TCPA requirements And you can remind me, but there was a character limit, if I recall, on how many characters could be in each text, and so there were those types of parameters through which we had to work with the patients. I think at one point, we’d also included a link to frequently asked questions
Lisa Blue:
Yep.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Where they could link over to it and, get some of those other simple types of questions as to, does my insurance pay for it, and, you know, who’s gonna contact me. Then when we moved into phase 3 and phase 4 of our texting cadence, that was when we actually, let them know through a message that we would be reaching out to them by telephone to set up a what’s what’s called the shared decision making visit. So at that time, CMS required, they don’t require it anymore, but at that time they required, we actually conducted a Shared decision making visit to explain to the patient, you know, that there is radiation exposure from a low dose CT scan, That the mortality benefit was something that required serial scanning. You had to do it year after year in order to really see the benefits, and also that there could be false positives and what we would be doing in the case of false positives. But with all that said You know, the great minds of our time are really talking about deep medicine, deep learning, and how artificial intelligence is going to play into this. But what they’re really leading us to is this concept of deep empathy. So the idea would be to take the practitioner, the physician, The practitioner and put them back in front of the patient in a stress free environment where they can actually start connecting with the patient on The issues that really matter to that patient that day. Right? So there’s some, there’s a lovely quote out there about The idea that if you have 15 minutes for a visit, you know, multiplied by 30 visits that day or whatever the math comes out to, We’d rather spend 13 of those 15 minutes with the patient In talking to the patient in 2 minutes with the computer as opposed to the 13 minutes that we spend with the computer right now Trying to find information and do our correct documentation and only spend the 2 minutes left over with the patient themselves actually speaking with them So we’re going to have to find a way through technology to to get through the deep learning and managed to put the physician and the patient back together in a context where more time is spent for deep empathy, And that’s gonna really be the game changer that is going to to make our society, our communities healthier.
Lisa Blue:
Absolutely. Right. That, you know, just like we were talking about a moment ago, you know, while While technology, you know, certainly has a really important place from, you know, whether it’s, You know, unearthing that that information from the patient’s chart to, you know, allow you to spend more of that face to face time, or the tools that we’re using to engage, or everything in between that that human connection, you know, really making space For that is is really the most important part of technology, right, so I couldn’t agree more. I would love it if you would share some, Some of the outcomes or the findings from the project that we worked on together.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Wonderful. Wonderful, Lisa. I sure will. We devised our project around the idea that There are many, many patients that are eligible for lung cancer screening that haven’t undergone lung cancer screening at this point. And so taking the bird’s eye view, on a national level, at this point, With the expanded criteria for lung cancer screening that allows us to find the eligible folks, There may be as many as 15,000,000 people out there that are eligible for lung cancer screening at this point. That’s an estimate, of course. We think that the number of the or the percentage of people that have been screened is only about 6% of the 100% that are eligible. Okay.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So, that’s a huge disparity, and there’s a lot of reasons that are discussed regarding that disparity. What about the other cancers? If you look at things like screening for breast cancer, we think that over 70% of Females that are eligible for it actually get it. Colorectal, that number is probably close to 70% as well. Prostate maybe around the same, cervical maybe just a little bit less, but again it just depends on what book you read and that data is readily available at PubMed dot gov so you can find the data as I kind of paraphrase and summarize. Now for lung cancer screening, we’re much much lower than that So the question is is really why and there may be many many barriers to lung cancer screening So we always talk about stigma, we talk about socioeconomics, we talk about you know educational status and perhaps Folks aren’t educated as to whether that they’re eligible or not. Transportation barriers, how do I get there? Financial barriers, So all of the numerous barriers that may you know fall between the patient and their screening that eligible patient and their actual Training. Those barriers really will need to be addressed in the future, but I think that’s where technology comes to play. So How do we reach out to these people? You know, well, first, you gotta find them.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So are they in the electronic health record? And the answer is maybe. Okay, so first we have to talk about the eligibility criteria. So, you know you’re eligible for lung cancer screening if you’re between the ages of 50 and 80 years of age according to the United States Preventative Task Force. Okay. You have to be a current smoker Or you have to be somebody that has smoked within the past 15 years. You have to have no symptoms of lung cancer, Okay. Currently, you could not have had a CAT scan of your chest within the last 18 months to meet eligibility criteria. Okay.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
And finally, you have to have a 20 pack year smoking history. Twenty pack year smoking history. Okay. Well, I can tell you that most of our EHRs may list the patient as a smoker or a nonsmoker, but they may not have the actual PACK year history identified correctly. And, you know, I would propose that that would be the 5th vital sign, so to speak. K. It’s that important that we identify pack year history in our electronic health records and create hard stops. Let’s say unless you get this information in here, you can’t even continue with your encounter with this patient. It’s that important in my opinion.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Why? Well, all of the major causes of morbidity mortality, in our country, are in some way tied to the use of cigarettes. Okay. So, what are those? Well, the most common cause of morbidity mortality is cardiovascular disease in this country, and smoking is a tremendous risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Cancer would be next. K. And we know that smoking does lead to cancer, of course, through carcinogens. Peripheral vascular disease. K.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Another huge, huge cause of morbidity mortality definitely related to smoking. Neurovascular disease or stroke. Okay. Definitely tight end. Okay. And finally, COPD and other respiratory and pulmonary diseases. But that by and large encompasses the great majority of disease processes That lead to morbidity and mortality in our country. And so unless we really know how to characterize Dose dependency or PACCAR history with those particular disease processes.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
It’s gonna be very exciting to see how Machine learning can actually make those connections moving forward. So once we have those things identified in the database then we can find our patients, and so we need an algorithm that will Look at those factors that I just mentioned, go to the machines, pull the patients out, and say, you know what? Here they are. K. So that’s kind of what we did manually. Right? We started with and I’m gonna be approximate here because I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but we took about 1280 such patients that met eligibility criteria that had never been screened before. We don’t know why they weren’t screened before. We don’t know if they had been asked and refused. Okay.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
We don’t know if they just hadn’t been asked yet. We have no idea why those people had not undergone lung cancer screening despite meeting eligibility criteria but we reached out to them So we found them in the data set in the computer we pulled out this cohort and then the next step was We wanted to see if they actually had broadband access. Okay Those folks had to have a cell phone in order to receive our text message. Without a cell phone we couldn’t do it, right? So we know that in rural America broadband access is going to be a discussion point because we don’t know Who’s got it and who doesn’t? What I can tell you is that the kids and the grandkids of the eligibility folks have broadband access By and large, and so that’s gonna be one of our secret weapons, you know, to get to some of these eligible patients. But with that said of the 1280. We selected about 11-30 of these patients for our study, and then we devised a text message algorithm as you know where we did it in 4 different phases and depending on the response rates. So, the patients had an opportunity to receive a text, and then they could opt in, and then they could opt out essentially. So, I’m gonna break there for just a moment. Lisa, can you still hear me?
Lisa Blue:
Yes.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Yeah. I’m on break. So, the reason I’m on break is because I had a hard copy of the study with me and It’s not with me. So I’m going to my computer here.
Lisa Blue:
Okay.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
And I don’t wanna mess up, I don’t want to mess up the quality of our connection by opening up the document. Would that be okay, Lisa?
Lisa Blue:
Yeah. Yeah. Go right ahead. No problem.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Alright. So I’ve done so.
Lisa Blue:
And then once you find it, then you can just close it back out so the connection isn’t trying to maintain both.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Okay. Can you still see me?
Lisa Blue:
Yes.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Okay. We can get back in anytime now. So
Lisa Blue:
Okay,
Dr. Suman Sinha:
so Lisa let’s share Okay, fantastic. I’ll share with you some of the results Lisa from our study Which was described earlier. So, of the 11 21 patients that were screen eligible and included in her study For receiving a text message, 205 of the 1121 patients opted in to participate in lung cancer screening By text message. So we had an 18.3% conversion rate, and I just want to Emphasize or focus on that number for just a moment. Up until that point, the national response rates were anywhere between one and 3% of folks that had completed lung cancer screening. Okay? And suddenly, we’re looking at 18.3% of folks, Somewhere in excess of 10 to 15 fold higher than, you know, would have been predicted by national response rates. So that in of itself, I thought was an incredible number to have that many come back. The other confounding point that I want to make there is that this was conducted during really the heart of the pandemic.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
So we were able to receive a response rate that was that good despite the fact that most of my pulmonary patients At that time, wanted to have nothing to do with coming to the hospital or the clinics where there was lots of high concentration of COVID positive patients that were very ill. My patients were afraid of getting sick, quite frankly, just from coming in and getting exposed to me and others. And so for that reason, many of them had switched over to televisits and So on. But even despite that, there was such a high, what we call, conversion rate for folks that were interested in lung screening. Okay. Of those, 106 of those patients of those 205 actually went through With shared decision making. Okay. So that was about 9.46% of those folks Had gone through it.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
And 95 of the 1121 patients included actually completed a low dose CAT scan for lung cancer Screening so we had an 8.4% rate of low dose CAT scan completion well above you know the national rate and certainly well above Any number that had been seen in in northeast Texas at that time so I think I think our results speak for themselves. They’re quite positive. You know, again, this was done during the midst of the pandemic. And so I’m even more pleased with the results and can’t even imagine in sort of the post pandemic era, what these numbers would actually look like.
Lisa Blue:
Yeah. No. That’s really incredible. Thank you very much for sharing those, and and it’s really exciting to think about, you know, those results, as you said, compared to the the The national averages, and and, you know, to really be able to engage those patients in a way that they understood Why there was the value or at least understood enough to say, yes. I’d like to hear more. Right? That’s really the goal of engagement is to get them engaged enough to re engage with their health care provider. So, so really very exciting results, and thank you for sharing them. You know, I, I think it, it was really such an exciting project to, to develop together, right.
Lisa Blue:
As, as we Thought about those first those distinct phases, and how do we really target those patients in the most meaningful way. As as you mentioned, you know, we We, you know, did a subgroup of of female only patients, right, just like just like breast cancer screening, you know, lung cancer screening is recommended for you, and so, you know, I think, you know, continuing to iterate on that together and, and even in the height of the Most probably difficult time for healthcare in our, in our, in our lives, you know, to be able to get those results. So As as we’re starting to, wrap up this conversation, I’m wondering if there is a story that you would like to a patient story that, that stands out from that time, from that, that project that we worked on, that that makes you most excited, that you’d like to share with us.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Absolutely Lisa. So, and that sort of leads to you know how many people of those that we screened you know ended up being found with cancer and 6 out of the 95 People that underwent low dose CAT scan were actually diagnosed with lung cancer. So, if you look at that percentage, it was 6.32% of those Screened actually were diagnosed with cancer. And, the whole key to screening is to catch folks early. We know that mortality for lung cancer is remarkably improved If we can catch the patient in early stage disease 90% of all cancers at this point are found incidentally. They’re not people that are in screening programs. So we really have to improve our screening to get these folks to come in and get caught early. About, I would say at this point nationally somewhere around 70% of cancers that are found In lung cancer are found in late stage disease, but through screening, we’ll be able to catch these folks in much earlier stages in stage 1 and stage 2 and so the mortality should really increase.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
We had 1 stage 3b that we found but the rest of them were stage 1s And, everybody went to uh-uh with an intention to cure the treatment protocol. So, they were referred to oncology and thoracic surgery, and 5 of those people actually had surgery done. We actually asked several of them to come and sit with us and express to us how they felt about receiving a text message. In particular, one of our patients who came forward, who went through Surgery, she’s a lovely lady. She was able to quit smoking, and She was eligible for a lobectomy, so she had her lobe with the cancer stage one cancer in it actually taken out, And, since that time, she’s done extremely well. She comes back to see me every 6 months to get a routine surveillance CAT scan For screening for lung cancer recurrence and in the two and a half to 3 years you know since that time now she’s on yearly screening. So we have numerous stories as such Lisa as you know but through this program itself with the Text message based approach you know she comes to mind as being a person that is just profoundly thankful for receiving that text message from ProviderTech and CHRISTUS Health and certainly a life that was saved through the program so.
Lisa Blue:
Wonderful. Well, I do remember, when we first heard her story, right, and how, Excited, that that that finding was and to be able to, you know, get her into treatment so quickly. So I’m I’m so glad to hear that that update that, that she’s still doing well, and, I wanna thank you for sharing, really, all of that, you know, incredible detail about the importance of lung cancer screening, The the opportunities that still exist to to increase screening in this country and, you know, even some of the The the the really important steps before that to do better, you know, intake and and and assessment of of Those who are smokers, what, you know, what is their PACCAR history. Right? So we can really not only impact lung cancer screening, But all of those myriad of really, you know, big impact chronic disease areas that you spoke of that we know that smoking Directly impacts. So those are all really important things to share with us, and you love Something for all of us to think about, as healthcare practitioners. So thank you so much for that insight and your time shared today.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Oh, Lisa. Thank you for the opportunity and for all the hard work that everybody at ProviderTech has done for us and our patients. So
Lisa Blue:
It’s certainly our pleasure, and thank you so much.
Dr. Suman Sinha:
Thank you.
Lisa Blue:
Thank you for listening to Happy Hour, patients. Please consider subscribing on your platform of choice and share your favorite episodes with other health care workers who need a bright spot in their day. You could connect with my team and me directly by going to providertech.com and clicking on connect with us. You could find the link to this in the show notes below. Have an awesome
