Year: 2025
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: 391 Background: As patients increasingly engage in their healthcare, capturing their perspectives is critical. Electronic Patient Reported Outcome (ePRO) measures, particularly through quality of life questionnaires (QOLQ), provide valuable insights into a patient’s overall well-being during cancer care. Allegheny Health Network Cancer Institute (AHNCI) aimed to implement ePRO capture using an evidence-based QOLQ. Methods: A literature review identified the Short Form-20 (SF-20) as a high-level evidence QOLQ available within our electronic health record (EHR) system. Initially, a pilot was launched at one campus across surgical, medical, and radiation oncology practices, assigning the QOLQ at provider visits (no more than every three months) beginning February 21, 2024. Patients could access the questionnaire seven days prior to visits via electronic check-in on the EHR’s patient digital platform, or complete it in the office via tablet, or with clinician assistance. The pilot identified numerous barriers to success including burden to patients and clinicians as the questions within the questionnaire overlapped with questions in established distress, depression, functionality, and toxicity assessment tools. Eliminating the established assessment tools was not possible due to regulatory, accreditation, and payer requirements for approved tools. Therefore, using PDSA methodology, the approach was modified to a voluntary QOLQ assigned every six months via the EHR’s digital platform to all medical, radiation, and surgical oncology clinic provider visits across the cancer program (go-live: December 18, 2024). Results: The initial pilot yielded a completion rate of 27.22% (1,035 questionnaires), indicating potential patient burden. Following the modified plan implementation (December 18, 2024 – May 28, 2025), the completion rate was 18.97% (1,714 questionnaires). Analysis of completed ePROs revealed that 31% of patients reported below-average physical functioning scores resulting in the launch of an additional quality improvement project. Conclusions: Implementing ePRO capture in a large hospital system presented challenges due to competing priorities. while the modified, elective approach had a lower completion rate, it provided valuable insights into areas for programmatic improvement. Ongoing monitoring of questionnaire completion rates is necessary.
Source: JCO Oncology Practice
Author: Lisa Ciafre
Institution: Allegheny Health Network
Language: English
Topic: Cancer survivorship and care
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4414893458
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