NCCN survivorship assessment of cancer survivors at an academic cancer center in the midwest and Great Plains region.

Abstract

497 Background: Previous research has shown the patient reported outcome measures (PROM) have been instrumental in screening patient for physical and psychological morbidities, maximizing cancer care services, improving overall survival in cancer care, and provide tailored self-management advice to individual patients. This project is designed to describe the characteristics of our cancer survivorship population at the Buffett Cancer Center and to identify areas where both further research is needed in cancer survivorship for this unique population and where patient reported outcome measures may be helpful in providing individual personalized care. Methods: This needs assessment study is a retrospective review of demographic and patient reported outcome data collected on cancer survivors as part of routine clinical care at the UNMC Buffett Cancer Center. The study population focused on adult cancer patients with a unique encounter at the Cancer Survivorship clinic from 1/1/20-6/22/21. The NCCN Survivorship Assessment Survey was collected from all survivorship patients who had at least one unique encounter in the survivorship clinic at the Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha Nebraska. Data was stored in REDCap for patient safety and analyzed descriptively using SAS software. Results: There were a total of 473 patients seen in the Cancer Survivorship Clinic between 1/1/20 through 6/22/21. Mean age of all patients was 56 y/o with the youngest patient being 19 and the oldest patient at 87 y/o. Sixty-five percent of patients were female. Twenty-nine percent of patients lived in rural locations. There was a statistically significant difference in flu shot maintenance and vaccine maintenance between the different insurance groups. Those with private insurance had the highest proportion of individuals who perceived themselves to be up-to-date with both flu shots and all other vaccines as compared to Medicare, Medicaid and self-pay. There was also a statistically significant difference in vitamin usage among race. The white group had the highest proportion of individuals taking vitamins in survivorship care. In addition, life interference from stress was the lowest in the non-white and rural populations. Conclusions: This project showed that a third of the patient population utilizing cancer survivorship resources at this midwest cancer center were from rural communities. This underlines the need for further survivorship research at UNMC focusing on streamlining efficient and effective delivery of cancer survivorship care to rural populations. In addition, further research is needed concerning the impact of race and insurance on survivorship care.