Breast cancer care redesign as an approach to streamline survivorship care: Outcomes and challenges.

Abstract

9 Background: Optimal follow up care for the 3.1 million breast cancer (BC) survivors in the United States has not been definitively determined. ASCO and NCCN recommend that early stage BC patients have a history and physical by their oncology or primary care provider every 3 to 6 months in the first three years post treatment. Additional visits have not been shown to improve outcomes. However, many patients are seen more frequently, leading to increased healthcare costs. In this context, we developed and implemented a BC care redesign algorithm (BCCRA) to reduce redundant follow up. Methods: The BCCRA multidisciplinary team recommended BC survivors be seen by an oncology provider every 6 months for the first five years post treatment and annually thereafter. Retrospective chart review was conducted to evaluate BCCRA adherence from November 2014 to November of 2015. Patients were deemed ineligible if there was a medically necessary reason for visits outside of the BCCRA such as reconstruction, ongoing treatment or clinical trial participation. Eligible charts were analyzed for adherence. For survivors who did not adhere, charts were analyzed for outcome of additional visits. Results: 116 patient charts reviewed and 72 (62.1%) were deemed ineligible. Of the remaining 44 survivors, 26 (59.1 %) adhered and 18 (40.91%) did not adhere. Of the 18 survivors who did not adhere, six had visits due to clinical concern and 12 had visits due to patient or provider preference. Of the 6 patients who had visits for clinical concern, 4 resulted in a change in the patient’s medical management (CMM). Of the 12 patients who had visits due to patient/provider preference, 2 resulted in a CMM. Conclusions: Despite buy-in from a motivated multidisciplinary team, there were challenges to implementing the BCCRA. 62.1% of patients were ineligible and there was a significant proportion of patients/providers who chose more frequent visit schedules. However, the BCCRA had 59.1% adherence which could result in cost reduction and increased flexibility in oncologists’ schedules. Further evaluation of the model is needed to validate these claims.