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Communicating Critical Information to Cancer Survivors: an Assessment of Survivorship Care Plans in Use in Diverse Healthcare Settings

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Abstract

Survivorship care plans (SCPs) serve to communicate critical information needed for cancer survivors’ long-term follow-up care. The extent to which SCPs are tailored to meet the specific needs of underserved patient populations is understudied. To fill this gap, this study aimed to assess the content and communication appropriateness of SCPs collected from diverse healthcare settings. We analyzed collected SCPs (n = 16) for concordance with Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations for SCP content and for communication appropriateness using the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) instrument. All plans failed to incorporate all IOM criteria, with the majority of plans (n = 11) incorporating less than 60% of recommended content. The average reading grade level of all the plans was 14, and only one plan received a superior rating for cultural appropriateness. There is significant variation in the format and content of SCPs used in diverse hospital settings and most plans are not written at an appropriate reading grade level nor tailored for underserved and/or minority patient populations. Co-designing SCPs with diverse patient populations is crucial to ensure that these documents are meeting the needs and preferences of all cancer survivors.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute [grant numbers K24CA212294 and R01CA241128].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California San Francisco, Division of General Internal Medicine, Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero Avenue, UCSF Box 1364, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA

    Helena C. Lyson & Urmimala Sarkar

  2. VA Health Services Research and Development Center for Health Information and Communication, Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA

    David Haggstrom

  3. Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA

    David Haggstrom

  4. Center for Health Services Research, Regenstrief Institute, Inc., 1481 West 10th Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA

    David Haggstrom

  5. University of California Berkeley, School of Public Health, 2121 Berkeley Way #5302, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Michael Bentz

  6. Indiana University Simon Cancer Center, 535 Barnhill Drive RT 440, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA

    Samilia Obeng-Gyasi

  7. Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, 995 Potrero Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94110, USA

    Niharika Dixit

Authors
  1. Helena C. Lyson
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  2. David Haggstrom
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  3. Michael Bentz
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  4. Samilia Obeng-Gyasi
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  5. Niharika Dixit
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  6. Urmimala Sarkar
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by all authors. Data analysis was performed by Helena Lyson and Michael Bentz. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Helena Lyson, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helena C. Lyson.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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No human participants were involved in this study for informed consent to be obtained.

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Lyson, H.C., Haggstrom, D., Bentz, M. et al. Communicating Critical Information to Cancer Survivors: an Assessment of Survivorship Care Plans in Use in Diverse Healthcare Settings. J Canc Educ 36, 981–989 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01725-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01725-1

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