Background: The American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer currently is revising its cancer program standards. Three new standards have been drafted that pertain to patient navigation, psychosocial distress screening, and survivorship care plans. This poster highlights 3 strategies implemented as part of our commitment to comprehensive care for cancer patients across the continuum.
Objectives: (1) Describe the evolution of a navigation program that spans the continuum and involves individualized care planning and education for patients/families while minimizing barriers and maximizing outcomes. (2) Identify a standard process to screen for psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual distress and engage an interdisciplinary team to reduce suffering and symptoms associated with cancer treatment. (3) Discuss preliminary findings regarding the impact of survivorship plans and treatment summaries to breast cancer and lymphoma survivors, their primary care providers, and their family caregivers.
Methods: Descriptive processes will be outlined related to the evolution of our navigation program, the implementation of distress screening and a symptom care team, and the provision of survivorship plans and treatment summaries. In addition, tools will be shared, as well as basic statistics related to sources of distress, satisfaction scores with survivorship plans/treatment summaries, and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy- General (FACT-G) scores.
Results: Tools to be shared include a patient navigation acuity scale, a patient navigation satisfaction survey, a distress tool, and research tools used in our survivorship study. Results include percent of patients with distress scores of 4 or more, most common physical and psychosocial sources of distress, protocols developed, satisfaction levels with survivorship plans, and most common issues identified by survivors at 1, 3, and 6 months posttreatment.
Conclusion: In addition to providing psycho - social support to address the needs of our patients, these programs help demonstrate compliance with national recommendations related to patient-centered care, which from an accreditation perspective, are increasingly recognized as essential cancer program components. Several lessons have been learned in each area that would be beneficial to discuss with other conference participants interested or involved in similar initiatives.