CHA Bundang Medical Center’s Pancreatic Cancer Multidisciplinary Team: doctors from gastroenterology, hemato-oncology, nuclear medicine, radiation oncology, general surgery, etc. are gathered in one table.

Multidisciplinary team care is an approach to treatment involving specialists from various fields who collaborate to make diagnostic and treatment decisions for patients. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) in the United States strongly recommends this approach to improve cure rates and treatment outcomes for all cancer patients. CHA Bundang Medical Center introduced multidisciplinary team care for pancreatic cancer in 2016. What began in a small conference room has now expanded to three multidisciplinary clinics, offering care for various cancers, such as breast, gynecologic, colorectal, liver, lung, thyroid, head, and neck cancer, as well as other refractory conditions, such as infertility and obesity. Five departments, represented by seven professors, provide an average of 30-minute consultations for each patient. Experts from the Departments of Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Hemato-Oncology, Radiology, and Radiation Oncology come together not just for “my patient” but for “our” patient’s care.

The impact of multidisciplinary team care is evident in increased patient and family satisfaction and improved cancer treatment success rates. In a 2021 satisfaction survey involving 628 patients who received this type of care, 100% reported satisfaction. Many patients have shared heartfelt stories about their experiences with multidisciplinary team care at CHA Bundang Medical Center’s Cancer Research Center on online communities for patients with cancer and blogs. As a result of delivering the highest level of care to every patient, the hospital has achieved the milestone of 5,000 multidisciplinary team care cases in the shortest time in Korea.