Quality management—improving the clinical pathway for breast cancer patients

Integrated Care Planning for Cancer Patients: A Scoping Review

“…Training sessions were often customized to the healthcare team and procedures native to their work environments [ 47 ], and conducted through in-person, phone or web-based sessions [ 82 86 ]. Ensuring that the integrated care plan could be adapted to meet evolving patient’s needs [ 65 70 ] and was aligned with operational procedures at the organizational and provider-level also emerged as a common feature of the design phase across the different types of integrated care plans [ 48 78 91 96 ].…”

“…Across the different types of integrated care plans there was a strong emphasis on the sharing of information within teams (i.e., between staff such as surgeons, nurses and allied health professionals within hospitals) and across organizations e.g., between hospitals and primary care practices involving hospital staff that are coordinating the discharge and transition of care to family physicians. Information exchange via integrated care plans often included aspects such as cancer type/stage, treatment, prognosis, side effects, medication lists prior to discharge, and follow-up care with oncology providers, surgeons and/or family physicians [ 34 36 45 48 50 51 55 56 96 ]. The nature of information exchange ranged from a summary of the patient’s treatment and symptoms being shared across providers via post, electronically [ 70 71 76 80 93 ], or fax [ 64 ] to a comprehensive multi-page plan which included information on symptoms and side effects, psychosocial needs, and community-based supports for the patient as they transition into survivorship [ 39 74 ].…”

“…National oncological care policies that establish or promote standards around treatment guidelines and care management provide a yardstick for quality around patient care [ 96 ] and create a supportive environment for plan uptake. Other macro-level facilitators included incentivizing uptake by minimizing administrative barriers (i.e., process of reimbursement for plan use) that providers may face in trying to promote the integrated care plan as the standard of care [ 77 80 ].…”