Abstract
As cancer care becomes increasingly complex, the ability to coordinate this care is more difficult for health care providers, patients and their caregivers alike. Despite the widely recognized need for improving continuity and coordination of care, the relationship of continuity of care with patient outcomes has yet to be elucidated. Our study’s main finding is that the Continuity and Coordination subscale of the widely used Picker System of Ambulatory Cancer Care Survey is able to distinguish between lung cancer patients with unmet supportive care needs and those without. Specifically, this study shows a new association between this widely implemented continuity and coordination survey and the ‘psychological needs’ domain, as well as the ‘health system and information’ domains of supportive care needs. The finding provides support for the idea that interventions to improve continuity may impact tangible indicators of patient care such as supportive care needs being met. The study focuses attention on continuity of care as an important aspect of optimizing outcomes in cancer care.
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Acknowledgments
The authors express their gratitude to Erica Moran, Christopher Obwanga, Jacqueline Leung, Kim Tran, Katie Fong, Stanley Lee, Diane Kishi, Allison Kurahashi, the Rose and Arthur Brooks Memorial Fund and Windfields Farms Clinical Research Unit.
Funding
This research is funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute (grants #19199 and 19807).
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interests. The authors have full control of all primary data and agree to allow the journal to review these data if requested.
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Husain, A., Barbera, L., Howell, D. et al. Advanced lung cancer patients’ experience with continuity of care and supportive care needs. Support Care Cancer 21, 1351–1358 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-012-1673-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-012-1673-7