There is something about this season that seems to invite reflection. The changing light, the arrival of a new academic and fiscal year, or simply the feeling that we are once again standing at the edge of something we cannot quite see clearly yet. Healthcare has always been a field of change. Some changes may bring opportunity. Others may bring difficult decisions about resources, staffing, access, and priorities.
Today, I find myself thinking less about what will change and more about how we will respond to change. Change can bring out very different instincts in us. Sometimes our first response is to protect what we have. We hold tightly to programs, processes, roles, and resources that we know work because uncertainty makes experimentation feel risky. Sometimes we respond by trying to do more with less, stretching our teams, adding responsibilities, and hoping that resilience will somehow compensate for finite capacity.
But there is another response to change: curiosity. What if, rather than immediately asking, “What are we going to lose?” we also asked, “What might we be able to do differently?”
That question is not meant to minimize the very real pressures facing healthcare organizations or the people who provide care. Resources matter. Staffing matters. Financial sustainability matters. And in oncology, where patients and families already carry extraordinary burdens, we must be thoughtful about any change that could affect access, quality, or the human experience of care.
Are there things we continue doing simply because that is how they have always been done? Are there opportunities to redesign workflows rather than simply add another layer of work? Can technology eliminate administrative burden rather than create more of it? Can disciplines work differently together? Can we move resources upstream, toward prevention and early intervention, rather than continually adding resources downstream?
Perhaps this is a moment to become more intentional about innovation—not innovation for its own sake, but innovation rooted in purpose.
The oncology workforce has demonstrated this kind of creativity before. Patient navigation evolved because people recognized that excellent medical treatment alone does not guarantee that a patient can successfully move through a complex healthcare system. Psychosocial care became increasingly recognized as an essential component of cancer care because we learned that treating the disease without addressing the person was incomplete. Multidisciplinary care emerged because we understood that complex problems rarely fit neatly into professional silos.
Many of the practices we now consider fundamental once required someone to ask, “What if we tried something different?”
That question remains available to us. Perhaps our challenge in this season of change is to hold two truths at the same time: We need to protect what matters, and we need to be willing to rethink how we achieve it.
As you read this Oncology Issues, I invite you to consider your own response to change. What are you holding tightly and why? What might be worth protecting? What might be worth letting go? Where is there an opportunity to redesign rather than simply endure? How can you leverage the ideas in these pages to spark innovation?
