{"id":410621,"date":"2025-11-28T13:20:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T13:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/410621\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T13:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T13:20:24","slug":"urgent-care-for-cancer-patients-is-more-accessible-in-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/410621\/","title":{"rendered":"Urgent care for cancer patients is more accessible in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

As Ellie Wilson waited for her name to be called at a Philadelphia emergency room, she felt nervous and uneasy. She found herself surveilling the other patients.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have parents with their young children who are coughing, stifling, sneezing \u2026 and that\u2019s all coming out in the air,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a man six seats down from you, puking in a bucket.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

All of this felt like a threat to her and her extremely compromised immune system. Wilson, a Pennsylvania resident, was diagnosed in July 2023 with triple-negative breast cancer<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a disease like this, and it compromises every inch of your body, you have to think about what the other people around you are doing,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s terrifying.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Before learning that she had this aggressive form of cancer<\/a>, Wilson had already been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a chronic inflammatory disease that causes inflammation and ulcers along the lining of the colon. The combination of chemotherapy and this other existing condition landed Wilson in the ER for gastrointestinal issues during the duration of her treatment, especially since cancer treatments often come with gastrointestinal issues like nausea and vomiting.\n<\/p>\n

Trips to the ER are not uncommon for oncology patients. During treatment, patients in this population experience side effects such as nausea, vomiting, fatigue and even blood clotting.\n<\/p>\n

But when patients cannot schedule a quick appointment for their acute but immediate needs, they often turn to the ER, where they may be exposed to infectious diseases. Cancer centers in Philadelphia have been filling this gap by providing oncology urgent care, specialized clinics that serve cancer patients who experience side effects from treatment that need immediate attention.\n<\/p>\n

The University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Abramson Cancer Center\u2019s clinic, the Oncology Evaluation Center<\/a>, recently extended its hours to be available 24\/7.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted a solution for our patients so they could spend as much time as possible outside the hospital while still being safely monitored as frequently as they need, depending on their treatment,\u201d Lindsey Zinck, chief nursing officer for the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine, said in an email.\n<\/p>\n

The center, which first opened in 2016, extended its weekday hours and offered weekend visits in 2024. After seeing good results in terms of patients avoiding ER visits, it became available around the clock.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe increasingly saw our patients needing transfusions on the weekend, after-hours care that couldn\u2019t wait for the next day,\u201d Zinck said. \u201cOur emergency department does a wonderful job for emergencies, but sometimes our patients need care that can\u2019t wait for clinic hours and doesn\u2019t need an inpatient stay.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":410622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,235,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,56854,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-410621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-urgent-care","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115627532318644147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}