Source: web.musc.edu Author: Leslie Cantu Beginning radiation therapy on time is critical for people with head and neck cancer. Delays in starting radiation therapy after surgery are associated with worse outcomes – and yet half of patients across the country don’t start radiation therapy when they should. A multidisciplinary team at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center has spent the last five years bringing this issue to light. Now, the team, led by Evan Graboyes, M.D., has been awarded a $3.5 million grant to test an approach for reducing those delays, which should improve outcomes. Called ENDURE, for Enhanced Navigation for Disparities and Untimely Radiation thErapy, the approach addresses the issue at three levels: organization, team and patient. New benchmark Reducing delays in moving to radiation from surgery has become a focus for cancer centers since November 2021, when the Commission on Cancer added a quality measure that grades centers on how many patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma begin radiation within six weeks of surgery. The commission accredits cancer programs, and this is the first time it’s included a head and neck cancer benchmark in its quality measures. The work of the Hollings team, which began when Hollings awarded Graboyes a K12 Paul Calabresi Career Development Award for Clinical Oncology in 2018, has been instrumental in providing the rationale for this new benchmark. Since that first grant award to Graboyes, the team has published 10 peer-reviewed publications showing that the time to starting radiation is a key measure, and [...]