An assessment of patient-provider communication surrounding tumor genetic profiling in thoracic oncology.

Abstract

285 Background: Thoracic oncologists regularly order mutational testing for lung cancer, called the Stanford Actionable Mutation Panel (STAMP) at the Stanford Cancer Center, that assesses for somatic tumor based mutational testing. This project surveyed patients who had this testing and assessed their understanding of the test’s purpose and results in thoracic oncology. We also gathered information about which providers on the care team are conducting this counseling and time spent on patient education. Methods: This quality assurance project was deemed exempt from IRB review. We obtained an EHR query of patients who had the STAMP testing between July 2020 and July 2021, which was kept in a password protected file in a secured shared folder. Patients were contacted by phone using Doximity Dialer and answers were recorded in Redcap as the questionnaire was administered over the phone. Patient responses were labeled using a random number generator and no protected patient information was recorded. Results: The EHR query of patients who had the STAMP test performed in the last year resulted in 77 unique patients and 34 patients agreed to complete the survey. The majority of respondents (73.5%) knew that their physician or oncologist had ordered the STAMP test for them. Of those patients, the majority (84%) stated that their provider, most commonly their oncologist, explained the purpose of the test. The majority of respondents (64%) stated that their provider, most commonly their oncologist, had discussed the test results with them, which usually took approximately 5-10 minutes. Almost all respondents (93.8%) felt that they had time to ask the questions they had regarding their results. 43.8% of respondents stated that their test results changed their treatment options and 18.8% were unsure. Similarly, 43.8% of respondents stated that they had a targetable mutation, while 25% were unsure. Overall, 42.9% of respondents felt confident in their understanding of their test results, 33.3% were very confident, 4.8% felt neutral, and 19% were not confident in their understanding. Conclusions: In this single center survey, thoracic oncology teams appear to be communicating effectively with their patients about the purpose and results of molecular testing. However, patients were more uncertain about how the test influenced their treatment, identifying a potential area of improvement in patient education.