Supportive care plans: Linking psychosocial and physical distress screening to evidence-based care across the cancer continuum
Update: This poster won an award in the Non-Student category at The 2015 World Congress of Psycho-Oncology, held 28 July – 1 August 2015 organized by IPOS/APOS World Congress of Pyscho-Oncology.
Presented by Jeannine Brant (Billings Clinic Cancer Center).
Background
Cancer care is increasingly complex and although health information technology solutions have proliferated in trying to improve quality care, adoption has been slow.
Carevive Care Planning System (CPS) is a novel IT platform used to screen for patient distress, symptoms, and need for supportive care referrals in gynecological (GYN) and breast cancer patients. The Carevive CPS improves upon existing approaches by not just screening, but actually linking patient reported outcome (PRO) data and identified distress symptoms, and supportive care needs to evidence-based education and recommendations.
This technology enables clinicians to use the symptom/supportive care data presented to them at the point of care to educate patients and make them aware of local resources and referrals in readily available, patient facing language.
Method
Prospective, multi-center pilot study at two cancer centers, Billings Clinic Cancer Center (Billings, MT) and Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa, Fl) enrolled both breast and GYN cancer patients. Providers also participated.
Patients complete an ePRO assessment and clinicians were presented with care plan recommended referrals and support services to review with, and provide to (via secure email and/or flash drive). patients based on symptoms and issues for which they screened positive during office visits(s).
Study outcomes include:
- Usability and satisfaction of the platform (patient and provider)
- Analysis of care plan recommendations
Conclusions
The Carevive Care Planning (CPS) was developed to improve care processes and patient outcomes through delivery personalized electronic care plans, aligned with quality care standards and current care evidence. Usability and satisfaction are high, and use of the platform results in high rates of recommendations for pyschosocial and physical distress. Limitations include of data on patient follow-up/follow-through on recommendations.
- Research Implications: Satisfaction with and use of the platform was high, but further studies are needed to determine the right timing and dose of the supportive care plans, whether or not referrals made were actually acted upon and whether care plan use improve patient outcomes.
- Practice Implications: Use of this technology has the potential to become standard of care and provide an easy, accessible and effective way to link point of care symptom screening with education, management techniques and referrals, improve patient self-management, patient-provider communication and better align clinical practices with quality care standards.
Poster by Jeannine Brant and team. Click to enlarge.