Each year, more than 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer. After months of treatment, thousands of them will return to their “normal life”. Unfortunately, nothing about their life will be normal as they deal with late side effects, long-term complications, and seek help from individuals who have not dealt with such a population. The needs of this growing body of underserved individuals is only beginning to be understood, and the strategies that must be employed to address the critical sequelae of survivorship are only now being seen as important to the cancer care community.

The ultimate goal for The Nebraska Medical Center Cancer Survivorship program is to provide the best care possible to meet the needs of our patients and optimize their quality of life. Survivors are often not aware of the kind of surveillance and follow-up care to monitor disease recurrence or manage late effects that may result from cancer treatment. Many survivors are at risk to develop physiologic and psychosocial late and long-term effects of cancer treatment that may lead to premature mortality and morbidity. Interventions, both therapeutic and lifestyle related, carry the potential to treat these late effects. When a patient completes active treatment, he may not have a survivorship plan or primary care physician that is knowledgeable of the issues of how to manage such care.

The Nebraska Medical Center Survivorship Program gives patients that are not on active treatment an opportunity to transition to an Internal Medicine physician in consultation with their treating oncologist and a team of support professionals that will develop an individualized plan of care. After this is completed, the patient can choose to return to their own primary care physician to implement the plan of care or remain in the care of the team, receiving services offered by the organization. Not only does this model address the patient’s long term needs with the involvement of appropriate disciplines, but it allows the expertise of the medical oncologists to be utilized in a consultant capacity creating increased opportunity to see additional new cancer patients in the most expeditious manner.

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