Vail Health’s Shaw at Home Program for Patients Undergoing Cancer Treatment Wins National Innovation Award
Vail Health’s Shaw at Home program, an at-home and community-based palliative care program for oncological patients at Shaw Cancer Center, aims to make treatment a little bit easier for individuals and their families.
“Shaw at Home is a grassroots effort to fill the gap within our community to meet the needs of our seriously ill and complex patient population in the world of oncology here at Shaw,” said Erin Perejda, a licensed clinical social worker at Shaw Cancer Center who manages, develops, and oversees the Shaw at Home program.
Shaw Cancer Center was one of only six recipients to receive the 2025 Association of Cancer Care Centers Innovator Award for the Shaw at Home program.
“To hear the feedback from our patients and to look at our patient experience scores and to hear from our patients how meaningful this experience is for them is so rewarding,” Perejda said. “To see it come back around and be highlighted through ACCC and recognized nationally is amazing. I’m so proud of this team… and I know how grateful they are to be doing this work.”
The Origins of Shaw at Home
Shaw at Home is a home and community-based palliative care program. Palliative care differs from hospice care in that palliative care is based on serving patients with serious oncological illnesses throughout their treatment. This care can end with a transition out of treatment and back to regular life or into end-of-life care.
The program began as a “passion project” of Perejda and Dr. Patricia Hardenbergh, a radiation oncologist and medical director of Shaw Cancer Center, in September 2020, Perejda said.
“We had identified as a system that there was this major gap in the community where a lot of our patients would have needs that would arise within the home care setting, but we would have minimal to no resources to turn to to meet those needs,” Perejda said.
The goal was to have patients avoid unnecessary hospital visits when their symptoms could be treated at home, while also providing a more continuous option for end-of-life care.
Care is “completely tailored to the patient, and they’re all unique in terms of what they need,” Perejda said. “That’s what we’re there to do, is to understand what’s important to them, understand their values, recognize when things are transitioning and be able to have conversations with patients and their families to bend and flex when we need to based on what they’re needing.”
The program launched through generous contributions from people in our community and began serving patients in June 2023. To date, Shaw at Home has served 144 unique patients, ages 24 to 91, through nearly 1,600 visits. Eighty-four percent of patients served in the program’s first year had stage IV cancer.
“This is for anyone diagnosed with cancer, and there are huge benefits to having a palliative care team to support you and your family through a cancer diagnosis, even when we anticipate the outcome to be the best possible outcome,” Perejda said. “It’s helping people to live their best possible life despite having a serious illness.”
