Cancer care through the fire and flames: Three-year experience in utilizing of oncologic electronic consultation and referral system in the red zone of Thailand.

Abstract

14 Background: “The South Thailand Insurgency” is burning violence in the deep south of Thailand. The insurgency which has been ongoing since 2004 has played out in the three southernmost districts of the country Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat and some area of Songkhla, so-called the “Red Zone”. The chronic terrorism had major affected on cancer service. Many cancer patients gave up on their lives due to struggle with the disease itself, financial constraints due to longstanding economic downturn and security concerns during travelling led to high loss to follow-up rate and treatment delay. We, an oncology service team working at Songklanagarind hospital, the only one cancer center served this area together with primary doctors and nurses in the Red Zone created a network and utilized an oncology-specific electronic consultation and referral system to make more efficient care. We reported its performance in 3 years period. Methods: Electronic consultation system (E-consult) was a web-based program developed to provide advice and facilitate the referral process in cancer care. Since October 2015, we prospectively surveyed the impact of this pilot project on the quality of service by counting waiting time, number of center visit until treatment, unnecessary referral avoidance, patient and potential cost saving compared to normal referral system. Results: E-consult reached out to 7 hospitals and 589 cancer patients successfully referred through E-consult. Among patients from the Red Zone, without E-consult, their average waiting time was 56.4 days, number of visit was 6.5 visits. The estimated financial burden was $758.8 per patient. After implementation of E-consult in 259 patients, average time to treatment was 41.5 days (p = 0.006) and a number of the counter visit was 2.3 visits (p < 0.001). Estimated financial burden could be reduced to $358.7(p < 0.001). Ultimately, we prevented 28 patients from unnecessary referral. Conclusions: In this special context the electronic referral system was helpful to improve medical access, timeliness to specialist care, saving the patients’ family time and resources. This model is widely applicable to oncology referral chain.