Hardeep Phull, MD is an oncologist, but he is also a patient advocate.  When conventional forms of immunotherapy and chemotherapy are not effective for a cancer patient, Dr. Phull will advocate for his patients to position them for a clinical trial, if they meet the criteria to qualify for the trial.

 

Dr. Phull says patient advocacy needs to start with the patient, but there are instances in which the patient’s doctor can advocate, such as working with an insurance company to make sure it covers a necessary procedure.  Another way a doctor can advocate for his or her patient is through empathy and empowerment.  Dr. Phull says he has seen patients go from “non-compliant” to cooperative, thanks to empathy.

 

Dr. Phull says in some instances a patient will want to change doctors, which these days is quite understandable as an increasing number of cancer doctors are specializing in one or two types of cancer.  He says if a patient wants to be treated by a doctor more specialized in their type of cancer than he is, he will try to connect the patient with such a specialist.

 

Three primary forms of cancer treatment are immunotherapy, genomic testing and chemotherapy.  Dr. Phull says a combination of the three can be prescribed, in some cases along with a clinical trial.  He says at one time genomic testing cost tens of thousands of dollars; now the same procedure has a co-pay of less than one hundred dollars.

 

Dr. Phull says clinical trials combine the standard of care with a newer sort of therapy, and the explosion of clinical trials will lead to an increase in good patient outcomes.  He adds whatever science has achieved as of today will be far greater ten years from now.

However, in order for a patient to qualify for a clinical trial, he or she must meet a long line of criteria.  And before the clinical trial may begin, a certain amount of time must elapse after the completion of a more convention treatment regimen, such as chemotherapy, to get the chemotherapy out of the patient’s system.  This is called a washout. 

 

Dr. Hardeep Phull says insurance companies will often deny coverage of a necessary procedure because it saves money.  That results in he and the nurses on his staff expending untold hours with the reviewers from the insurance companies to make a case for the patient.  Dr. Phull says it is frustrating to deal with a reviewer who is often reading from a script when articulating the company’s coverage denial.  He says many times the patient is angry and many times in this situation, the doctor or nurse is angry; but Dr. Phull says he has changed his approach to one of empathy for the reviewer who he suspects deals with angry callers all day.  He has found that an empathetic approach often gets the reviewer to take a closer look at the appeal, which often leads to coverage.

 

Additional Resources:

 

Websites:

 

https://www.doximity.com

 

https://www.clinicaltrials.gov

 

Hardeep Phull, MD on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com