CHEST awards grants for quality improvement in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment
Drs. Tamer Said Ahmed and Adam Fox will receive funding to implement quality improvement projects in 2024
January 5, 2024
Glenview, Illinois – The American College of Chest Physicians® (CHEST)
announces Tamer Said Ahmed, MD, FCCP, and Adam Fox, MD, MS, as the
recipients of grants to deploy quality improvement (QI) demonstration
projects in biomarker testing for patients with suspected non-small cell
lung cancer.
Centered around implementation of
institutional
and
case-by-case
checklists into clinical practice, the projects seek to substantiate
best practices for ordering biomarker tests.
“Biomarker testing allows for tailored treatment plans that drastically
impact the progression of lung cancer, but every hospital system and
practice is following a different procedure for testing,” says Dr. Said
Ahmed, pulmonary and sleep physician at Toledo Hospital (ProMedica
Health System) and Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo. “To
best serve the patient, our project aims to streamline the approach to
biomarker testing to bridge health care inconsistencies. Given the
intense progression of some forms of lung cancer where every week
matters, the more streamlined we can make the biomarker testing process,
the earlier we will get to an accurate diagnosis, begin treatment and
likely extend the life of a patient.”
Discrepancies in the testing process stem from existing silos between
specialties including pathology, oncology, interventional radiology and
more. Care is fragmented, leading to delays like repeat biopsies because
a large enough sample was not taken the first time.
Involved in creating the biomarker checklists, Dr. Fox, Assistant
Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, is
the second recipient of a grant to implement a QI project.
“By intent, these checklists help to provide a systematic approach to
timely and comprehensive biomarker testing,” says Dr. Fox. “What we need
now is to implement them into clinical practice to gain metrics that can
be studied, identified and will lead to the process being widely
accepted. To truly impact practice, we need to be able to provide strong
evidence for interventions that work for clinicians to implement.”
This project is supported in part by AstraZeneca, Sanofi and Pfizer.
About the American College of Chest Physicians
The American College of Chest Physicians® (CHEST) is the global leader
in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of chest diseases. Its
mission is to champion advanced clinical practice, education,
communication and research in chest medicine. It serves as an essential
connection to clinical knowledge and resources for its 22,000+ members
from around the world who provide patient care in pulmonary, critical
care and sleep medicine. For information about the American College of
Chest Physicians, and its flagship journal CHEST®,
visit chestnet.org.