Towards a personalised approach to aftercare: a review of cancer follow-up in the UK

Abstract

Increasing patient confidence to initiate follow-up specific to their needs is likely to increase the workload of primary care providers, who will need training for this.

Integrated care pathways for cancer survivors – a role for patient-reported outcome measures and health informatics

“…There is little evidence of the benefits of using PROMs in follow-up care for cancer survivors due to the paucity of quality studies [21], however early research suggests that alternative methods to traditional hospital-based care such as telephone-based or nurse-led or GP led care are acceptable to patients and do not compromise safety or quality of life [22,23]. This approach can be extended to follow-up care utilising PROMs in redesigned care pathways.…”

Comparing the costs of three prostate cancer follow-up strategies: a cost minimisation analysis

“…For prostate cancer, like other cancers, follow-up care after active treatment is important for detection of both disease recurrence and immediate and late occurring side effects of the cancer or its treatment. For prostate cancer, these can include physical problems, such as incontinence or sexual dysfunction, and psychosocial problems, such as depression [3][4][5].…”

“…Traditionally, prostate cancer follow-up care has been within the hospital setting and included regular visits to a specialist clinician for at least several years; indeed, some patients are never discharged from follow-up [3]. With growing numbers of survivors, this model of care has been argued to be economically unsustainable [4], and there is interest in developing alternative approaches.…”

Survivorship Care Plans: A Work in Progress

“…The ncsi is convinced that few recurrences are found that way and that that method is ineffective and inefficient for follow-up care 53 . Multiple evaluations conducted by the ncsi have shown that their broader, personalized approach can lead to improvements in several outcomes, including patient satisfaction [54][55][56] , patient confidence in self-managing their own health 56 , cost effectiveness 42,54 , and reduced demand for acute care and outpatient resources 54,57,58 .…”