Redesigning Ambulatory Cancer Care and Advancing Nursing Innovation

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Redesigning Ambulatory Cancer Care and Advancing Nursing Innovation

Podcast: Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Episode Date: January 26, 2026
Host: Elizabeth Gregerson
Guest: Analisa Rodriguez, Vice President of Nursing and Patient Care Services, Chief Nursing Officer, Fox Chase Cancer Center

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Episode Overview

This episode features Analisa Rodriguez, CNO of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discussing the redesign of ambulatory cancer care and the advancement of nursing innovation. The conversation centers on Fox Chase’s Ambulatory Care Excellence (ACE) model, key achievements, ongoing challenges in staffing and technology adoption, and future opportunities for innovation through AI and organizational growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Fox Chase Cancer Center: Legacy & Achievements

• Background:
  • One of the nation’s first cancer centers, located in Philadelphia and part of Temple University Health System.
  • Renowned for basic, translational, and clinical research.
  • Magnet designation for nursing excellence since 2000 — only 33 hospitals in the U.S. have achieved six or more consecutive Magnet designations.
  • Recipient of the Gold Certification for Excellence in Person-Centered Care by Planetree International.
  • Founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
• Quote:

  “We are among the only 33 hospitals in the US who have earned the Magnet designation six or more consecutive times.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [01:25]

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2. Major 2025 Initiative: Ambulatory Care Excellence (ACE) Model

• Problem Identified:
  • Ambulatory setting faced role ambiguity, care coordination gaps, and staff frustration.
  • Growing clinical volume with stagnant staffing and resource allocation.
• ACE Model Solutions:
  • Role Clarification:
    • Clear delineation of responsibilities between medical assistants, nurses, advanced practice providers, and physicians.
    • Task inventory conducted with staff input to define top-of-license work.
    • Professional growth opportunities promoted, especially for medical assistants (encouragement for certification).
  • Resource & Workflow Optimization:
    • Service line-specific staffing analysis and benchmarking.
    • Adjusted clinic templates and nurse workloads to allow dedicated care coordination time.
    • Staffed up to ensure out-of-clinic work (e.g., follow-ups, patient prep) is covered.
  • Outcomes:
    • Improved care coordination and continuity.
    • Enhanced patient experience via meaningful appointments (prepped by nurses ahead of time).
    • Reduced clinic delays through standardized workflows.
    • Transformative approach being scaled across service lines.
• Quote:

  “We clearly defined and delineated roles and responsibilities across the care team members to avoid redundancies of work... We actually completed a task inventory, if you will, and with the input of the different care team members, they identified which tasks are supposed to fall under a specific discipline so that they can continue to work at top of their licenses.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [04:00]

• Quote:

  “We've also experienced reduced delays in our clinics by standardization of our workflows. We now have prep for clinic time for our nurses so that they can ensure that critical task results and records are completed before appointments so that the appointment for the patient is meaningful and we're minimizing delays.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [07:47]

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3. Future Challenges & Opportunities: Looking to 2026

A. Top Challenges

• Quality & Accountability:
  • Maintaining high standards and achieving top-decile nursing quality.
  • Driving ownership at the unit level for care excellence.
• Staffing & Retention:
  • Ongoing competition for clinical talent.
  • Challenge of retaining engaged and committed staff and leaders.
  • Sustaining improvements from process and care model redesign.
• Quote:

  “One of the headwinds that we always keep on focusing on is ...how to keep our staff and actually even leaders engaged so that we can continue to retain them. How do we maintain our low turnover, and with all of the ... redesigns ... how can we truly sustain all of the changes and deliver on what we have hoped to deliver?”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [10:09]

B. Greatest Opportunities

• Technology & AI Literacy:
  • Greater adoption of technology, especially in predictive analytics to optimize workload and acuity determination.
  • Using AI for early warning of patient deterioration, risk prediction (falls, readmissions), and workflow enhancement.
  • Promoting AI literacy and reducing skepticism among nurses — emphasizing that AI augments, not replaces, clinical skill.
  • Embracing tools like ambient voice documentation to reduce nurse documentation time and free up more time for patient care.
• Organizational Willingness:
  • Active collaboration with IT, readiness to pilot new technologies, and a culture open to transformative change.
• Quote:

  “How can we use technology to really improve workflows and enhance efficiencies at the bedside?... In terms of just making things better for the nurses...how do we begin to incorporate, let's say, ambient voice documentation for our nurses so that we reduce the time that they are actually manually entering what their notes, what they did for the patient, so that we can reduce documentation burden and more importantly, free up some of their time so that they can actually spend with our patients.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [12:05]

• Quote:

  “Our team is ready and they are really excited to be part of the change in healthcare delivery.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [13:59]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On culture and innovation:

  “I really would like to continue on finding ways to continue to develop our nurses, our staff nurses, as well as our leaders.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [10:34]

• On technology readiness:

  “I often talk to our colleagues in our IT systems and say, hey, we would welcome any opportunities to pilot any technology implementation over at the cancer center.”
  — Analisa Rodriguez [13:55]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:57] — Introduction & Fox Chase Cancer Center achievements
• [02:53] — Launching the Ambulatory Care Excellence (ACE) Model
• [04:00] — Role clarification and process redesign
• [07:47] — Impact: Improved care coordination, reduced delays
• [09:11] — Future priorities: quality, staffing, innovation
• [11:24] — AI in nursing, technology adoption, and staff engagement
• [12:40] — Ambient voice documentation and freeing up nurses’ time
• [13:55] — Organization’s eagerness to pilot new technologies

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Conclusion

Analisa Rodriguez provided a transparent and constructive inside look at how Fox Chase Cancer Center is fundamentally reshaping its ambulatory care practices through the ACE model, clarifying roles, optimizing workflows, and championing technology and innovation in nursing. As they look to the future, their focus will be on elevating quality, supporting staff, and leveraging AI not only as a tool for efficiency but as a catalyst for culture change in cancer care.

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Transcript

[A]

This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.

[B]

Welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Elizabeth Gregerson, a reporter here at Beckers, and I'm thrilled to interview Analisa Rodriguez, Vice President of Nursing and Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer at Fox Chase Cancer center, on the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so grateful to be able to share your insights with our podcast audience.

[C]

Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for the opportunity to participate in this podcast and to share some of our experiences at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Fox Chase Cancer center is actually one of the nation's first cancer centers. We are in Philadelphia and we are a part of Temple University Health System. We really have a great legacy of nationally competitive basic translational and clinical research. Fox Chase Cancer center includes the American Oncologic Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research. We are also a national institute designated comprehensive cancer center and actually one of the founding members of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. I'm also proud to say that we are Magnet designated for nursing excellence since 2000. So we are among the only 33 hospitals in the US who have earned the Magnet designation six or more consecutive times. And in addition, FoxChoice was also awarded the Gold certification for Excellence in Person Centered Care by Plantry International. And that actually just makes us one of only four organizations that focus on cancer care to be honored with this achievement.

[B]

Perfect. Well, thank you for laying that out for us too. And congratulations on all those achievements. I think a great place to kick off the conversation too. You know, in light of all those achievements, when you look at the past year, what's maybe the most important initiative or achievement you led? And you know, how did you reach that goal and what were the results?

[C]

Yeah. Elizabeth, thank you. Wow. I look back at last year and there was just a lot of initiatives that we accomplished. But more notably, I think that what my team and I are really most proud of is our ambulatory care excellence redesign. We call it the ACE Model that really emphasized interdisciplinary partnership and just a holistic approach to patient care in our cancer center. The model is a more structured approach and designed to really look at the efficiency, coordination and patient outcomes in the ambulatory space. And also part of that is focusing on top of license work for all of the care team members, be it our medical assistants, our nurses, our advanced practice providers, and of course our physicians as well. When we looked at our model, we really looked at the inefficiencies in our processes, not just inpatient access, but also in clinic workflows. We also looked at the different roles in the various clinics, and it was apparent to us that there was a lot of role confusion. There was not any clarification or delineation of what the medical assistant would be doing and what the nurses would be doing, as well as the advanced practice providers. And so oftentimes there is gap in care coordination. And it also results to a lot of the frustration by our team members in terms of inconsistencies. So we thought about the ambulatory care excellence model and I want to describe some of the key features that really made this successful in our ambulatory care setting. As I mentioned, there was some role clarity issues that we had to really navigate through. Right. So we clearly defined and delineated roles and responsibilities across the care team members to avoid redundancies of work. What we did was we actually completed a task inventory, if you will, and with the input of the different care team members, they identified which tasks are supposed to fall under a specific discipline so that they can continue to work at top of their licenses or their certifications. We also optimize the role of our medical assistants so that we are ensuring also that they find a lot more like professional development in their role. And so we have really supported them in achieving certification. One of the things too that's challenging in the ambulatory space is that we have experienced significant growth in our clinical volumes. We added a lot of providers, yet the staffing and the resource allocation in the clinics have remained stagnant. And so what we looked at are service line specific staffing. Where we looked at resource allocation, we analyzed the clinic templates, make sure that we also analyze the work and in the time that's needed by nurses to ensure care coordination. And so we then dedicated time for care coordination for our nurses. When we reviewed their workload, we identified that there really was not enough time for them to do out of clinic work, if you will. So following up on the patient results, preparing for the next visit. So part of our model was to really carve out those time and that really requires upfront investing in our staffing. Right. So we looked at Some benchmarking. We looked at the workload that's needed in the clinic. We have identified what incremental staff we had to actually resource for our clinics so that we can do all of the work. And so far it has really improved care coordination. Our patients experience better continuity, annuity of care because now we have nurses who have adequate time in handling follow ups, medication management and care planning. We've also experienced reduced delays in our clinics by standardization of our workflows. We now have prep for clinic time for our nurses so that they can ensure that critical task results and records are completed before appointments so that the appointment for the patient is meaningful and we're minimizing delays. So it truly has been a transformative approach and it is something that we are implementing across all of our service lines in the cancer center.

[B]

Perfect. Yeah. I feel like that intentional defining of roles and tasks is something all healthcare leaders across any specialty in the industry will appreciate. So I will appreciate. So thank you for laying that out for us. So that initiative was kind of looking back in the past year or so. I'd love to look ahead maybe in two different directions. One, the biggest challenge or the hardest thing you think you'll have to tackle in the coming year. But on the flip side of that, also where you see the biggest opportunities for organizational growth in 2026.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. So looking ahead, really the priorities that I have is continued focus on our quality of care. Right. You know, how do we continue to excel and provide superior patient and outcomes and how do we continue to achieve the top decile in nursing quality? So really thinking about how to drive accountability and ownership at the unit level so that everyone feels that this is our responsibility to ensure that we deliver exceptional care for our patients. I also am wanting to look at how do we really create an infrastructure to support nursing innovation at the cancer center at the unit level, how do we continue to encourage our nurses to find innovative solutions in addressing some of the common challenges that they see in their day to day. And with that, I really would like to continue on finding ways to continue to develop our nurses, our staff nurses, as well as our leaders. Now, in terms of the headwinds, as you can imagine, in health care, staffing is always something that worries us because we're competing with the same pool of talented staff in the marketplace. And so one of the headwinds that we always keep on focusing on is to how to keep our staff and actually even leaders engaged so that we can continue to retain them. How do we maintain our low turnover and with all of the process redesigns, care model redesigns that we have, you know, how can we truly sustain all of the changes and deliver on what we have hoped to deliver in terms of different ways of conducting things? Now, the biggest opportunities I think for us in particular is technology adoption. Right. And increasing AI literacy in nursing in particular. So when I think about technology adaptation, how can we really look at predictive analytics for our workload and for defining the acuity for our staff? You know, how can we use technology to really improve workflows and enhance, you know, efficiencies at the bedside? When I think about, you know, the adoption rates in terms of some of the technology that we have implemented, you know, sometimes we still have low adoption rates. And so part of my task and part of my leader's task is really understanding what are the challenges of our staff in order for them to truly buy in, into these technologies. When I think about AI, I think that we need to increase the literacy of nursing in terms of how artificial intelligence can help with their day to day. And, you know, it's not necessary, it's not really replacing our talent. Right. But augmenting so that we can use AI, for example, to, you know, know, look at what are the early warning signs actually that would indicate that our patients are deteriorating. How can we leverage AI and just the amount of data that is collected on a day to day basis, based on our charting and our recording, to do some risk prediction of our patients? Right. Which of our patients are more prone to fall or which of our patients have an increased readmission rate, for example, based on what we're tracking? And then in terms of just making things better for the nurses and providing them a lot of the tools that really can help them, you know, how do we begin to incorporate, let's say, ambient voice documentation for our nurses so that we reduce the time that they are actually manually entering what their notes, what they did for the patient, so that we can reduce documentation burden and more importantly, free up some of their time so that they can actually spend with our patients. So I think that there's just a lot of opportunities that we're excited for when it comes to technology. And AI and I often talk to our colleagues in our IT systems and say, hey, we would welcome any opportunities to pilot any technology implementation over at the cancer center. So our team is ready and they are really excited to be part of the change in healthcare delivery.

[B]

Absolutely. Well, it's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on to see what's coming out of Fox Chase in all the different fields that you mentioned, but definitely with technology, because I know it's such an exciting time. Yeah, that's all the time we have for today. So I just wanted to thank you again for joining me. I feel like it's been a really amazing and informative discussion, and I appreciate you giving us your time and letting us kind of peek behind the curtain of what's happening at Fox Chase.

[C]

Thank you so much, Elizabeth.

[B]

Awesome. And I invite our listeners to tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast [e-mail] thank you again. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day.