Measuring the impact of provider education to referral rate in survivorship care.

Abstract

14 Background: There will be an estimated 19 million cancer survivors by 2024. Survivors are often lost to follow-up after active treatment due to poor coordination of care between clinical oncologist and primary care providers. Lack of awareness of survivor needs including insufficient monitoring of late effects after oncologic care contribute to poor care coordination. While cancer centers have gradually introduced survivorship care, it remains challenging for some providers to refer their patients to a survivorship visit once their cancer treatment is completed. Continuing education is known to improve provider knowledge and may lead to an increased number of patients referred to survivorship. Methods: Survivorship starts when completing the initial treatment (surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy). The project will implement the review of an education module regarding survivorship through the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) education website by breast cancer (BC) medical oncologists and their fellows in training at a cancer center in the Midwest. Providers are to complete “Comprehensive Care for Cancer Survivors”, a free continuing education module, on the NCCN continuing education website. Pre intervention data was retrospectively collected, including all BC cases from June 2016 to August 2016. Post intervention data will be prospectively collected over 1 month. Pre and post intervention referral rates will be compared using descriptive statistical methods. Results: A baseline 3 months review of 349 encounters noted 22 of 28 (78.6%) BC survivors were referred to the breast cancer survivorship visit. Results for this project are ongoing, and will include the analysis of referral rates by medical oncologists or fellows during the 1 month post completion of the NCCN education module. These results will be compared to the previous 3 months Conclusions: While data collection is pending, we hope to show that providers who have completed formal education regarding survivorship are more likely to refer breast cancer survivors to a survivorship visit. If the project is effective it will help increase the number of cancer patients seen in the BC survivorship clinic and improve the health outcome of BC survivors.