Keys to Building a Successful Interdisciplinary Program-Funding the...

The patient navigator role is crucial to fertility programs for laterally integrating all disciplines involved in making fertility preservation happen for patients and families.

The patient navigator works with patients with both malignant and non-malignant conditions that have treatment impairing their fertility.

Cincinnati Children's works with UC (University of Cincinnati) to send older patients for oocyte cryopreservation.

The Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute at Cincinnati Children's is broken up into 4 teams: bone marrow transplant, liquids and lymphoma, solid tumor, and neuro-oncology.

The fertility consult email address has a 24-hour response time for urgent cases, with a pager available Monday to Friday and on-call gynecologist or urologist coverage on weekends.

Cincinnati Children's grabs baseline fertility labs on each patient, including anti-mullerian hormone levels for females, to have something to compare when they're off therapy.

The program provides standardized educational folders with specific handouts tailored to each patient's preservation options, including materials from LiveWell and LiveStrong.

Every patient who has an option to elect fertility preservation receives follow-up conversation within 72 hours, either over the phone or inpatient.

The program works with the social work team to identify patients with financial burden and allocate philanthropic funds, as even a $75 storage fee may be too much for some families.

The program aims to see patients one year post-chemotherapy to repeat the fertility panel and compare with baseline to assess how fertility was impacted.

Fertility labs are drawn each year in survivorship because there could be a window for post-therapy intervention such as ovarian tissue cryopreservation or oocyte cryopreservation.

The navigator position at Cincinnati Children's started with 4 hours of FTE, increased to 8 hours, and eventually became a full-time job.