Early in our discussion, Dr. Patt describes why and how she crafted her career to ensure a better therapeutic path for cancer patients. She says, “I had to pivot my career to make sure I stood at the intersection between the innovative therapies that we were discovering and the ways in which they get to patients.”
 

But applying precision medicine in clinical practice is complicated, a fact made clear in Dr. Patt’s December Journal of Precision Medicine article, Cost and Complexity Can Restrict Access to Life-Saving Precision Oncology. She explains that all patients with advanced cancer should have an analysis to understand therapeutic targets, yet across the country, many such patients aren’t being tested in accordance with guideline recommendations. Dr. Patt works tirelessly to be sure patients at Texas Oncology are given the best results.
 

She says, “We’ve really worked hard as an organization to set up an ‘easy button’ for clinicians to assess for these therapeutic targets or to identify the lock, if you will, so we can then use the keys of scientific discovery to give patients better outcomes.”
 

At Texas Oncology, this easy button is the Trapelo® decision-support platform, which they use to nudge providers to do genomic testing when appropriate. Dr. Patt’s team has also set up a quality standard through Trapelo, to ensure all patients with advanced cancer undergo an assessment that can reveal the potential therapeutic modalities to which they may respond. Texas Oncology also tracks performance as a quality metric to give feedback to its clinicians.

By implementing these systems, Dr. Patt says Texas Oncology is able to bring the latest and greatest precision medicine innovations to patients in their communities. “We want to give patients a great path to cancer care. And that’s not only controlling cancer or curing cancer but allowing patients to live where they are, so they can work at their jobs, and sleep in bed with their spouses, and pick up their kids from soccer practice and do all the things that allow them to live either cured or with a chronic disease.”
 

Dr. Patt’s passion of caring for people coupled with her unique blend of clinical and business acumen makes her one of the most inspiring guests we’ve had on the podcast. It’s a must-listen episode for those invested in bringing precision oncology breakthroughs to more patients.