Placement: Kaiser Permanente
Mentor: Scott Young, M.D., Co-Executive Director and Senior Medical Director, Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute
Advisors: Jeff Convissar, M.D., Medical Director, Kaiser Permanente, Care Management Institute; Bill Marsh, M.D., Vice President, Care Delivery Information Technology, The Permanente Federation; Nancy Taylor, M.B.A., Vice President of Quality Operations and Administration, The Permanente Federation; Violeta Rabrenovich, M.H.A., CHIE, Senior Director, Clinical Quality Improvement, The Permanente Federation
Project: Beyond Implementation: Virtual Care Standards, AI Innovation, and Service Design in Cancer Care
Angel Arnaout, M.D., M.Sc., FRCSC, M.B.A., is a 2020–21 Canadian Harkness/CFHI (Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement) Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is a Breast Surgical Oncologist at Ottawa Hospital, Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Ottawa, and Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. As Regional Director, Breast Care Quality of Eastern Ontario, Arnaout oversees the quality of breast cancer care for 13 regional hospitals, focusing on access, efficiency, effectiveness, patient experience, and equity of care. Arnaout is also an Expert Lead of Knowledge Mobilization and Physician Practice Change at the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, and an Executive Member of the Cancer Care Ontario Breast Cancer Advisory Board, where she works to support the provision of high-quality cancer care across the country. She is a recipient of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada Enid Johnson MacLeod Award, Cancer Care Ontario Human Touch Award, and Order of Ottawa for her dedication to breast care and women’s health in Canada. Arnaout received her M.D. from Dalhousie University, M.Sc. in Physiology from the University of Toronto, and was valedictorian of her Global Executive M.B.A. class at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Project Overview: The new digital age of medicine has the potential to democratize access to care, improve efficiency, and empower patients to more actively engage with their health. Many digital health innovations also have the potential to reduce health system costs and improve both health outcomes and patient experience. However, their impact to date is variable and limited in scope. As organizations struggle with the adoption of digital technologies, innovative service design approaches should be used to envision a future configuration of health services that promotes successful integration.
This research will focus specifically on patients with cancer, as cancer care must be maintained during the COVID-19 pandemic and future events that may cause disruptions to the provision of in-person care. Innovations to optimize care delivery throughout the entire cancer continuum, from prevention to treatment to survivorship, will be explored through qualitative research and design thinking. Based out of Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute, this research aims to: 1) identify the patient, provider, and clinical determinants of high-quality virtual care and develop a framework for achieving these; 2) both examine and generate innovative service design approaches that advance the integration of digital technology; 3) develop an evidence-informed best-practice guide for determining the best modality of virtual care delivery to produce optimal outcomes and value; and 4) explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in enabling sophisticated channel management of virtual health care to optimize care delivery for both patients and providers.