Baptist Memorial Health Care/Mid South NCORP Consortium

The Baptist Memorial Health Care/Mid-South Community NCORP is part of Baptist Memorial Healthcare Corporation (BMHCC), a non-profit faith-based healthcare system with 24 hospitals, 21 outpatient oncology clinics, 8 radiation facilities, and 19 outpatient infusion centers, providing care for approximately 8000 new cancer patients each year. Recent mergers with healthcare systems in rural North, Central and Eastern Mississippi, West Tennessee and Eastern Arkansas have expanded BMHCC’s service area population, to over 125 counties, 4.8 million people across AR, MS, TN, Southwestern Kentucky, Southeastern MO (the bootheel) and Northwestern AL. This rapidly expanding service area covers more than 40% of the 252 counties and parishes in the Delta Regional Authority, which is congressionally acknowledged as the most socio-economically challenged population in the US. BMHCC provides about 30% of cancer care in this demographically, socioeconomically and geographically heterogeneous region, which is also at the heart of the ‘cancer mortality belt of America, with the highest per-capita cancer incidence and mortality rates. Additionally, the region also has fragile public health infrastructure. Before our NCORP, residents of these counties had no reliable access to clinical trials. Since our NCORP began in August 2014, we have rapidly expanded access to clinical trials for our service area population, enrolling more than 150 patients per year, even though the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 40% of our enrolled patients are underrepresented groups, 17% reside in rural areas, 13% are uninsured, 21% have Medicaid. Our team members have served in multiple roles to support NCI, NCORP and the various NCORP Research Bases, including service on the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors, CTAC, NCORP taskforces and NCI Steering Committees, such as chairing the Cancer Prevention Steering Committee. We have established Multidisciplinary Care Delivery programs in Breast, Thoracic, Gastrointestinal and Hematologic Oncology to develop Disease-Specific Research Groups that link our clinical trials activities closely to our clinical oncology care programs. This strategy has accelerated our progress. Our system-wide implementation of the Electronic Health Record system, EPIC, has enhanced our research ability, especially in Cancer Care Delivery Research. For the second NCORP funding cycle, we successfully expanded our NCORP research infrastructure across the full extent of BMHCC, with special emphasis on increasing patient recruitment across the state of Mississippi. By leveraging Population Science, Implementation Science and Team Science, we have built a rigorously data-driven clinical trials infrastructure. Our overarching goal remains to improve the quality and outcomes of cancer care delivery to our high-risk population by increasing participation in clinical trials, a goal we have expanded in sequential fashion every year. We support multiple NCORP Research Bases including Alliance, ECOG, SWOG and Wake Forest. Our accrual performance exceeds the requirements for participation as a main member institution of each base. We subscribe to the belief that ‘the best treatment is a clinical trial’.