Background: When a patient with cancer or terminal illness is hospitalized, they may benefit from the input of their outpatient, primary oncologist or palliative care provider to inform key decisions. As most oncologists’ and ambulatory palliative care clinics are based outside the hospital, these conversations often happen via unreimbursed phone conversations, making it difficult to [...]

Background: Admitted Hematologic and Oncologic patients are often complex and have a unique set of challenges. Balancing outpatient care plans with inpatient medical and psychosocial issues can lead to long lengths of stay, patient dissatisfaction, and provider burnout. Hospitalists offer an expertise in managing complex medical problems along with an adept ability to integrate and [...]

Background: The burden of acute care among cancer patients, estimated to exceed $70B by 2020, represents ~50% of all costs of advanced cancer care and accounts for 70% of nationwide regional variation in these costs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed value-driven Rule OP-35 includes a mandate to reduce acute care use among [...]

Case Presentation: A 69 year-old male with widely metastatic melanoma presenting seven weeks into his treatment with ipilimumab and nivolumab with five days of progressive lightheadedness, headache, nausea, non-bloody emesis, and generalized malaise. The patient had witnessed syncope in the clinic and was sent to the emergency room where he was febrile to 100.8 and [...]

Case Presentation: A 28-year-old man with Stage IV colon adenocarcinoma presented to the emergency department with nausea, vomiting, dyspnea on exertion, and generalized weakness. Two weeks ago, he experienced similar symptoms during his first cycle of fluorouracil (FU) bolus and infusion, oxaliplatin and leucovorin chemotherapy (FOLFOX). Two days ago, he was symptomatically premedicated and received [...]