Book Review: The Comprehensive Cancer Centre: Development, Integration, and Implementation

Abstract

Cancer has become one of most serious problems for public health, inducing a heavy economic burden on individual and national dimensions. An extensive scope of healthcare experts has unceasingly been making efforts to tackle this life-threatening illness. This edited volume, The Comprehensive Cancer Centre: Development, Integration, and Implementation, offers a platform to share the experiences and ideas from oncology studies across 18 chapters with specialists from America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Its objectives pertain to developing a comprehensive cancer care plan with guidance for hospitals and medical institutions and authorities, helping cancer centres upgrade their infrastructure, practice standards, policies and procedures aligning with the latest, highest international standards, especially for low- to middle-income countries, and exhibiting substantial measures for prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.
Cancer care incurs voluminous direct and indirect costs; for instance, medical expenses and a loss of individual productivity, correspondingly. A mission-based comprehensive cancer care includes a variety of tangible and intangible arrangement, including physical settings, specialty roles, innovations and services, for which integrated delivery and novel therapies are necessary, with the aid of advanced support systems. High specialisation involves clinical care, multidisciplinary application, infrastructure, community outreach, education and training, and research. Such a care model also aims to diminish “financial toxicity” (p. 149), reduce healthcare inequality due to restricted resources, achieve better outcomes for cancer care and improved life quality for cancer patients, and increase survival rates. Eliminating disparities results in medical safety, welfare, social justice, and human rights.
A comprehensive cancer care centre offers inpatient and outpatient treatment and services. Inpatient ward settings and outpatient infusion centres need modern floor designs to ensure a clean and safe environment, in addition to paying attention to further staff training, facilities, and operational and financial management. Telecommunication technology sustains telepathology and telemedicine services, which promotes present trends in the contemporary healthcare field. Moreover, non-clinical care is also provided, such as palliative and hospice care (which encompasses physiological, social, psychological, emotional, mental and spiritual issues), and end-of-life counselling (which delivers adequate resources and guidance to patients who are suffering terminal illnesses or nearing death whether or not they are experiencing death anxiety).
Such a wide-ranging approach results in evidence-based, patient-centred care, with decreased readmissions to the hospital and enhanced patient satisfaction. It forms a complex of pathological services, intensive care, mental health and emotional disorders in order to look after the physical, psychological, and functional wellness of cancer patients. Therefore, extensive assistance is essential, regarding laboratories, blood banks, ancillary services for transplantation and transfusion, and biobanks to store biological samples for research, for which expertise, staff, placements, updated medical instruments, and a suitable health information technology system are heavily invested.
This complete spectrum of oncology care comprises survivorship care, including prevention, surveillance, intervention, and coordination. Community outreach becomes an integral part, providing cancer education and resources, scheduling appointments, arranging transportation, navigating treatments, giving support during appointments, and helping with financial guidance. However, certain obstacles hinder faster progress: fragmented care delays diagnosis and treatment, information technology systems often lack big data, education and training are immature, and international and local governmental support does not suffice.
Despite the holistic view of this patient-oriented cancer centre presentation, this compilation overlooks care for care-givers and patients’ family members who need clinical support when they play a critical role in taking care of critically ill patients, especially for paediatric oncology and for the aged population. Similarly, compassion fatigue among medical frontliners is always given limited attention, because of which service quality is possibly to deteriorate. There has also been little detailed discussion on pain management; for example, bone metastases, for which complementary and alternative therapy is likely effective.
Here are some suggestions for ameliorating the readability of this book. First, promoting advanced medical directives is important for healthcare nowadays. This medical power of attorney allows patients to leave instructions on their healthcare preferences when they are still able to present their will and intended arrangements in order to ensure dignity and respect in death. Second, cultural and religious factors affect patients’ values; hence, the outputs of this care model may vary among different groups. Although the authors do come from various regions and countries, they could explore these factors more deeply. Third, even though outpatient cancer care during COVID-19 has been addressed in different chapters, there is a lack of in-depth examination; for example, on topics such as workplace safety, floor design and work flow, procurement, use of space in order to align with social and physical distancing, visits, and ward ventilation. Preparation for a peak in infectious diseases should be a popular topic for cancer patients. Last, this review proposes a protocol to develop this care approach from a global perspective. This will not only help translational research to incorporate studies into healthcare practices, but also low- and middle-income countries to cope with cancer.
This compilation confers multi-specialty care, using a diversified service team with multimodality expertise: specialised physicians, nurses, case managers, oncology-specific psychiatrists, psychotherapists, pharmacists, radiologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, dieticians, social workers, religious practitioners, and financial planners. Being aided by these human service professionals, precision medicine or personalised medicine maximises the utilisation of healthcare resources for patient care, and optimises sustainable, interdisciplinary and high-quality service, attaining smarter targeted therapies and securing quality management in the sense of structure, process and outcome. Furnishing the practitioner with an all-round view, the book is a worthy resource for clinical and healthcare professionals, scientists, researchers, administrators and policy makers, pharmacy and laboratory service providers, students, patients, and caregivers, who are willing to equip themselves with cutting edge concepts and to accomplish social equity in medical services.