By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
In early 2022, a conversation started that led to the creation of the Breaking Barriers to Care initiative now offered to patients of the T.J. Regional Health Oncology Program.
Amy Stephens, as the nurse navigator for the oncology program, has the role of helping cancer patients access the resources they need to get through their treatment processes, removing as many barriers to those resources as possible along the way.
Not long after Community Medical Care, a locally based nonprofit organization, was merged under the umbrella of the T.J. Community Mission Foundation at Jan. 1, 2022, she went to Randy Burns, executive director of the foundation, to discuss some of the challenges she routinely saw, and they identified two primary ones, he said.
One of those is the cost of nutritional-supplement drinks that are often prescribed by the doctors specializing in cancer care – oncologists – as patients go through chemotherapy or radiation treatments, because they need to keep up their calorie and nutrition intake, and the other is transportation to and from scheduled medical appointments.
As time has gone on, another need that couldn’t be met locally before can now be addressed here in Barren County, and that new element of Breaking Barriers is launching next week.
“We wanted to be able to try to figure out how it is we can help through the [foundation] to meet those needs,” Burns said of that initial meeting with Stephens.
T.J. Regional Health’s oncology program is affiliated with the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center, so they reached out to the foundation for that center to find out how it helps meet those needs.
“It was a great meeting, and we were able to really learn a lot in terms of what we can do as a foundation to help patients,” he said.
They structured the eligibility requirements the same way Markey does, with income having to be below 300 percent of the federal poverty guideline figure, based on household size.
“With all the other expenses associated with fighting cancer, it adds up quickly,” Burns said of items such as the nutritional supplements, even for people with good-paying jobs, “so we decided to mirror their model.”
Confounding those costs is the fact that some cancer patients are unable to work while undergoing treatment, he said.
For most types of assistance programs, that bar is set in the 100 to 200 percent range. For example, the latter of those figures is the case for other programs at CMC that aren’t part of Breaking Barriers, said Tina Combs, CMC program coordinator.
Nutritional supplements
Burns said he didn’t realize before that just how expensive those supplement drinks, e.g. Ensure and Boost, could be. Depending on which flavor you get, a 24-pack of Boost Plus costs about $40, he said.
“A lot of these patients are prescribed anywhere from two to three a day, some all the way up to five drinks a day that they’re supposed to drink,” he said.
For those who qualify for this Breaking Barriers program, the foundation basically underwrites $30 of the cost of each case, approximately 75 percent of the cost, Burns said.
The oncology department stocks a variety of flavors and types for distribution through the program.
Transportation
The second big barrier Stephens had identified was being able to get to and from their medical appointments, and that applies whether they live a mile from the hospital or two counties over, as the oncology program serves patients from multiple counties around the region.
Burns noted that one additional thing that makes Breaking Barriers for Care different from the other CMC programs is that only Barren County residents were eligible for the existing programs, but patient of the T.J. oncology program, no matter what their county of residence, can get help with these
resources.
“For a lot of folks, just the cost of gas these days … is oftentimes a barrier to keep people from getting their treatments that they need,” he said.
Through Breaking Barriers, patients can get gasoline gift cards up to a certain amount per month for those where that’s the issue.
“If it’s an issue where the folks just don’t have a ride …, we also created a partnership with Dave’s Transportation Service here in Glasgow, and so we have an agreement set up with them where we can schedule pickup and delivery back home for patients that need a ride to and from their cancer treatments,” Burns said.
Status check
Combs said that since Breaking Barriers started in March, close to 70 people have been served so far through the nutrition and/or transportation elements of the program, and each is allotted $200 per month to use on any one or a combination of those things through a voucher process.
“That’s such a need, it can get used up so fast, and we want to be able to help each person,” she said.
As those two elements of Breaking Barriers to Care got launched, Burns said they wanted to wait a bit to see how it would function and decide where else to focus attention.
“We wanted to be able to grow into the possibilities,” he said. “We want to provide as much assistance as we can, but at the same time we also have to be able to raise the dollars to be able to provide that assistance, so we wanted to be responsible in that regard. As we’ve gone through the year and we’ve been able to tell more and more patients about the services that we provide through Community Medical Care, it’s been really neat to see how more and more people are opening up and sharing with us that they can use the assistance, and that’s what we want.”
Burns said they had gotten to the point that the foundation felt it could expand a little bit.
“In October, we’re actually getting ready to launch our third line in terms of services we provide,” he said.
Wigs and mastectomy-related products
A local business – The Good Wife – sells wigs and offers a mastectomy boutique now, Burns said, and the foundation will be able to provide a one-time assistance for patients who need help purchasing a wig or some other type of head covering. Breast cancer patients who need mastectomy-related supplies can also receive assistance in that area.
“While it’s different than the other pieces of what we’re doing in regards to the nutrition, which is directly related to the health of the patient, and it’s different than the transportation, which is required for them to be able to get the treatments in the first place, this is more for the emotional and psychological well-being of patients who are going through cancer that is, in our opinion, vitally important that we be able to support,” Burns said. “So we want to be able to help in that way as well.”
He said they’re looking forward to getting this new service started.
Combs said that once patients are enrolled in the program, they can get help with up to $300 annually for these products through a voucher program.
“We’re so excited about that, because there’s nobody else here in Glasgow that’s doing that, so the nurse navigator there in oncology had to refer people to Bowling Green, and there’s a ton of people that can’t make it to Bowling Green,” she said.
Even if they can make it, it’s difficult to afford those things if they don’t have insurance coverage for them, Combs said.
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Breaking Barriers to Care
Funds raised with the T.J. Regional Health Care Power Hour luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Nov. 3 to celebrate local cancer survivors will benefit the services in the Breaking Barriers to Care program.
For more information on Breaking Barriers to Care, contact Amy Stephens, nurse navigator at T.J. Regional Health Oncology, at 270-659-5890, or the Community Medical Care office at 270-659-0229. CMC hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 134 N. Race St., Glasgow
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