Team or step-oriented approach

Hello HopeHeal. Since I live in the Houston area and was diagnosed with IBC, I made a beeline for MD Anderson because they have an IBC clinic and are a highly-rated facility. I was assigned a team, and I have wondered what my options would be if I didn't "click" with any of them. So far, so good with the Medical Oncologist, but when preparing for a mastectomy I want to know more about who's going to be doing the cutting on me, and if that person will hear my concerns. I'd really like a "Consumer Reports" of surgical oncologists instead of having to sift through sketchy internet reviews.

I will meet with my assigned surgeon in advance so if I don't get a good feeling about her I want to know how I make a change, which I suppose is a question for MD Anderson's patient advocate.

I will be interested in other responses to your post, as I wonder what choices others have made.

I am going to a local hospital with a breast center and everything has been done within the system. I really like how seamless everything is. I have never wondered about the next steps and if I do have questions or issues I know who to ask.

When I had some weird issues crop up with my port, all of the doctors could get into the system and easily review all of my records and communicate about the best way forward for my case. They decided it would be safest to have my port removed — I had a call and an appointment scheduled with the surgeon to remove the port hours before my oncologist called me back to let me know the decision.

I am also sure that if I didn’t like a specific doctor I was seeing then I could request a different one.

Hi, Hope. I suppose I'm more interested in patient reviews of doctors, particularly surgeons. I know there are a lot of tragic looking results from mastectomies, and I want the best result possible (as does everyone) because I don't plan on reconstruction. I'm going to ask my MO next week about the breast surgeon that was assigned to me. She appears to be relatively new and has no reviews to be found.

I'm sure she is qualified, but I want someone with a LOT of experience. Originally my team included a male doctor who has been a breast surgeon for several years and his patient reviews are very good. I want to know why he was replaced by the young woman and how I can see him instead, so I'm just going to ask. After all, I should have some input into this thing, and so far... I was "assigned" to the IBC team and away we go.

One limiting factor for me is that I don't know which MD Anderson doctors are specific to the IBC Clinic, and whether that even matters. I'm not participating in a clinical trial, so I imagine my course of treatment will be the same no matter which MDA doctor I use.

LW - I don't think there would be any prohibitions, but remember - most people who have had successful treatment don't stay on BCO. They have moved on. You might try sending a PM to Whippetmom. She keeps a list of good docs all over the country.

HopeHeal - unless you are on an HMO plan or something like Medicare Advantage, I see no reason you can't go outside the group or the hospital.

Edited to say - this is exactly why I have chosen to stay on a traditional Medicare plan. I can go anywhere, anytime and pick my own docs.