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The Swedish Digestive Health Network is a group of physicians who have a dedicated interest
in digestive diseases. We have eleven gastroenterologists and five nurse practitioners. Thoracic surgeons,
colon/*** surgeons, head and neck surgeons, weight loss surgeons, as well as nutritionists,
hepatologists. Conditions that essentially go from the mouth all the way to the bottom
end. Including the esophagus, the intestines, the liver. Tummy aches to pancreatic cancers.
Before the network existed, patients would be referred to a specific physician who then
would have to decide, after meeting the patient, that the patient would need to come back and
see another one of the specialists. And so the patient would have to make multiple trips
back and forth to Swedish to see these number of individuals. Sometimes patients don't know
what they need. They have a problem. They know it's digestive related. They don't know
what kind of doctor would be the right one to take care of them. The nurse navigator
is a new initiative that is being put into place for the Digestive Health Network and
it is intended to make the entry point for patients as easy and trouble free as possible.
Swedish Digestive Health Network, how can we help you today? A patient can call us directly
and describe his or her symptoms and the nurse navigator will help identify which specialist
to start the workup and process with. The patient's care is shared between the local
physicians who are the primary care and/or referring physician with the network. Ultimately
the patients will come here for some specialty treatment but they will go back and be cared
for by their regular physician on an on-going basis. I think the collaboration between physicians
at Swedish is really quite remarkable. It's as simple as two physicians sitting down over
a cup of coffee, looking at films, and finding out what needs to be done. It's also different
visions that come together to make the care of the patient better. There's no reason that
we can't have mutliple people collaborating to share information, share insight and experience
to get the best outcomes for patients with complex digestive diseases. What's new is
just the process. What's not new is the doctors, the technology that we provide, the experience
the patient gets. What's new is how we get the patients in and how we interact together
and how we interact with the physicians outside the network.