The oncology-focused value-based enabler Thyme Care has launched a virtual palliative care program, branded as Enhanced Supportive Care.
The program is designed to help cancer patients and their caregivers manage physical and psychosocial symptoms at home, according to Dr. Julia Frydman, formerly of Mt. Sinai Health System, who will lead the new service.
“There’s a lot that happens [for cancer patients] in between oncology, chemotherapy and immunotherapy visits. Patients need additional support; they need additional prescriptions. New symptoms come up, new side effects,” Frydman told Palliative Care News. “I am excited to join Thyme Care because it is a value-based cancer care company that is focused on not only helping oncologists take care of patients well, but also everything that happens in between those visits, through a virtual navigation model.”
Cancer patients, like many other chronically ill individuals, often benefit from palliative care. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommends that health care providers integrate palliative services into a cancer patient’s care at the time of diagnosis.
Through the program, palliative care will be carefully coordinated with the patients oncology care with an integrated team of providers. Patients receiving palliative services through the Enhanced Supportive Care program will also receive aid in navigating medical decisions and goals-of-care conversations.
“This is meant to be a virtual program in close collaboration with primary treating oncologists for folks who need specialty palliative care, so those with uncontrolled symptoms — either from progression of disease or from the cancer-directed therapies that they’re getting — those who have really complex medical decisions that they need to make and those approaching the end of life and a transition to hospice,” Frydman said.
Prior to joining Thyme Care, Frydman was a senior assistant professor in the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, where she led educational and research initiatives in addition to providing clinical palliative care.
She trained as an internist at New York University and then specialized in hospice and palliative medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she also completed a masters in clinical research. Fydman earned her medical doctor degree from Harvard Medical School.
Nashville-headquartered Thyme Care was established toward the end of 2020 following a $16 million funding round, led by Town Hall Ventures and Foresite Capital. The company in October 2023 secured an additional $60 million in funding to expand its health services for cancer patients, including palliative care and programs to address social determinants of health.
Through contracts with risk-bearing entities, the company’s clinicians care for roughly 3,000 patients and families navigating cancer and serious illness.
“Palliative care doctors are critical and are so often the ones making sure a patient’s goals and values are aligned with the medical interventions and course of treatment,” Thyme Care CMO Dr. Bobby Green said in a statement. “For a variety of reasons, those services aren’t always accessible to cancer patients and they often aren’t delivered in collaboration with the oncologist, leading to a fragmented experience for everyone involved.”
