New Cancer Center Medical Director Tackles the Fundamentals

Having been a private practice oncologist for 17 years in Los Angeles, Douglas Blayney, MD, has referred patients to an academic medical center. He knows what it’s like when that referral process goes well, and he knows how it feels when it doesn’t. As the new Ann and John Doerr Medical Director of the Stanford Cancer Center, Blayney is committed to making the Stanford experience a good one for patients and their referring physicians.

“I’ve been on the other end of a bad relationship with an academic medical center,” says Blayney. “I want to make sure that doesn’t happen here at Stanford. I look forward to building on the successes of my predecessors by continuing to focus on the patient experience and the efficiency of operations at the Cancer Center.”

After just a few months in his current position, Blayney is well versed in Stanford’s strengths – translating bench science into effective cancer treatments. And he has a vision for tackling the areas he would like to see improved, primarily customer service for both patients and their referring physicians.

“We’re working to improve the fundamentals: world class patient care, superb customer service and outstanding relationships with our referring physicians,” says Blayney, who is Immediate Past President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Blayney believes the “quantitative thinking” skills he learned as an engineering undergraduate at Stanford will serve him well for the task of refining systems within the cancer center. “Engineering is about taking basic science discoveries and translating them into systems that work well,” he explains, “and that’s what I bring to medicine and biology.”

During his seven years as medical director of the University of Michigan’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, Blayney was instrumental in implementing several quality improvement initiatives. Most notably, Michigan became the first large academic cancer center to participate in the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative. Blayney is now working to have the Stanford Cancer Center participate in this same review process, tracking the patient experience at a granular level to quantitatively measure quality of care.

Expediency of care is another hot button for Blayney, who would like to enhance the multidisciplinary aspect of patient care at Stanford. Currently, most patients who come to Stanford for a treatment plan or a second opinion have their cases reviewed by a multidisciplinary tumor board that includes specialists from surgery, medical oncology and radiation oncology. In the past, this plan of care may have required several trips. Blayney would like to see that process whittled down to one day.

Once patients receive a treatment plan from Stanford, Blayney believes many of them can return to their local oncologists for treatment. “The relationship between a community oncologist and a patient is based on trust, clinical knowledge and reputation,” he says. “It’s our job at Stanford to build on that relationship and demonstrate to patients that we can work as a team with their referring physician.”

But he recognizes that Stanford is the center of choice for many patients and referring physicians because of its national prominence and long tradition of discovery and innovation. “Stanford has a history of translating basic science observations into clinical medicine,” says Blayney. “What was true of Henry Kaplan and Hodgkin’s disease, will also be true of some of the cancer stem cell work that’s going on here, and with some of the compounds that are being developed here to treat breast cancer and lymphoma,” he says. “My job is to make that translation easy for the clinicians who take care of patients, and to make the very newest treatment option available to patients through clinical trials.”

Blayney is no stranger to Stanford. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the university, met his wife at Stanford and was a member of the men’s crew team. “Stanford professors and coaches had a great influence on my life and my development as a physician,” he says. “This is an opportunity to make a contribution to an institution that I love.”