A pilot study of population-based, patient-reported outcome collection in cancer survivors

Patient-reported outcome measurement implementation in cancer survivors: a systematic review

PURPOSE

Patient-reported outcome measurements (PROMs) are increasingly used for cancer patients receiving active treatment, but little is known about the implementation and usefulness of PROMs in cancer survivorship care. This systematic review evaluates how cancer survivors and healthcare providers (HCPs) perceive PROM implementation in survivorship care, and how PROM implementation impacts cancer survivors' health outcomes.

METHODS

We systematically searched PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from database inception to February 2022 to identify randomized and nonrandomized studies of PROM implementation in cancer survivors.

RESULTS

Based on prespecified eligibility criteria, we included 29 studies that reported on 26 unique PROMs. The studies were heterogeneous in study design, PROM instrument, patient demographics, and outcomes. Several studies found that cancer survivors and HCPs had favorable impressions of the utility of PROMs, and a few studies demonstrated that PROM implementation led to improvements in patient quality of life (QoL), with small to moderate effect sizes.

CONCLUSIONS

We found implementation of PROMs in cancer survivorship care improved health outcomes for select patient populations. Future research is needed to assess the real-world utility of PROM integration into clinical workflows and the impact of PROMs on measurable health outcomes.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS

Cancer survivors accepted PROMs. When successfully implemented, PROMs can improve health outcomes after completion of active treatment. We identify multiple avenues to strengthen PROM implementation to support cancer survivors.

Implementing a web-based system of screening for symptoms and needs using patient-reported outcomes in people with cancer

PURPOSE

To evaluate the implementation of a web-based system of screening for symptoms and needs in people with diverse cancers in a general hospital in Australia.

METHODS

This was a prospective, single-arm, pragmatic intervention study. After local adaptation of an online portal and training, cancer nurses were asked to register patients to screen via the portal in clinic or at home. Symptoms were scored according to severity, and scores above cut-off were reported to nurses for assessment and management, according to best practice.

RESULTS

Fifteen nurses working across diverse tumour types agreed to approach patients for screening. Of these, 7 nurses approached 68 patients, with 5 approaching more than 1 during the 7-month study period. Forty-seven (69%) patients completed screening, and 22 rescreened at least once. At first screening, 33 (70%) patients reported at least one symptom, most commonly tiredness (n = 27; 57%), reduced wellbeing (n = 24; 51%) and drowsiness (n = 17; 36%). Of the total 75 screens undertaken during the study, 56 (75%) identified at least one symptom, and 22 (29%) identified at least one severe symptom. All patients with a positive first screen were followed up by a nurse assessment and intervention-mostly reassurance (n = 19, 59%) or referral to another health professional (n = 11, 34%).

CONCLUSION

Screening for symptoms and needs using a web-based portal identified many unmet needs, but the uptake of this intervention by nurses and patients was lower than expected.

A Narrative Review on the Collection and Use of Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes in Cancer Survivorship Care with Emphasis on Symptom Monitoring

Electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) applications promise great added value for improving symptom management and health-related quality of life. The aim of this narrative review is to describe the collection and use of ePROs for cancer survivorship care, with an emphasis on ePRO-symptom monitoring. It offers many different perspectives from research settings, while current implementation in routine care is ongoing. ePRO collection optimizes survivorship care by providing insight into the patients' well-being and prioritizing their unmet needs during the whole trajectory from diagnosis to end-of-life. ePRO-symptom monitoring can contribute to timely health risk detection and subsequently allow earlier intervention. Detection is optimized by automatically generated alerts that vary from simple to complex and multilayered. Using ePRO-symptoms during in-hospital consultation enhances the patients' conversation with the health care provider before making informed decisions about treatments, other interventions, or self-management. ePRO(-symptoms) entail specific implementation issues and complementary ethics considerations. The latter is due to privacy concerns, digital divide, and scarcity of adequately representative data for particular groups of patients.

Launching an Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes Initiative in Real-Time Clinical Practice

Patient-reported outcomes play an essential role in improving care across the cancer continuum. This paper reports on the experience of a tertiary care center to standardize the use, collection, and reporting of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in 10 disease-specific survivorship clinics. To minimize the burden of patients to complete surveys, an institutional committee with oversight on all patient surveys required an application be reviewed and approved before their distribution in a clinic. To begin collecting PROs, each clinic submitted an application tailored to its clinical operations, staffing, and scheduling characteristics. The dates for the submission of each application were staggered over a 2-year period, which contributed to a lack of uniformity in the project (ie, approval dates, start dates, collection and reporting of results). The delays were primarily due to the time and resources required to build the electronic version of the PRO survey into the institutional electronic medical record. To date, 6 of 10 survivorship clinics submitted applications, 5 were approved, and 4 launched the electronic MD Anderson Symptom Inventory (eMDASI) through the patient portal. Metrics collected between January 2019 and December 2020 for the thyroid, bone marrow transplant, genitourinary, and head and neck clinics indicated the numbers of eMDASIs sent to patients varied by clinic, with the lowest from the bone marrow transplant survivorship clinic (6) and the highest (746) in the thyroid Clinic. The total number of eMDASIs returned by the patients ranged from 2 (bone marrow transplant) to 429 (thyroid). Overall, patients' return rates of the eMDASI ranged from 33.3% to 57.7%. Several strategies were implemented to increase the delivery, submission, and completion of eMDASIs. Our findings indicate the integration and implementation of PROs in survivorship clinics are achievable. Further work is needed to enhance the ePROs web-based process to adequately compare PROs across diverse cohorts of cancer survivors .