Improving Supportive Care For Patients With Thoracic Malignancies

Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research

Status: Completed

Conditions: Supportive Care; Quality of Life; Lung Cancer

Treatments: Behavioral: Weekly telephone symptom assessment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry

Identifiers

NCT03216109

PAT0001ARG

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to use a proactive approach to improve symptom management of patients with thoracic malignancies and ensure receipt of evidence-based cancer care delivery. In this pilot study, the investigators propose to evaluate the feasibility of using outbound, proactive telephone symptom assessment strategies and ensuring evidence-based care receipt and measure the efficacy of this approach on patient satisfaction with their care, patient activation, quality of life and use of healthcare resources.

Full description

The investigators have previously shown in previous work that patients and caregivers who experience thoracic malignancies express poor symptom management that result in utilization of healthcare resources after-hours for symptoms that could have been prevented if assessed more proactively and prospectively. Currently, there are limited proactive approaches to prospectively identify and intervene on patient-reported symptoms. The purpose of this study is to enhance symptom assessment strategies by using a proactive assessment approach to improve symptom relief for patients with thoracic malignancies.

The investigators will test whether a proactive telephone symptom assessment and management strategy is feasible and can facilitate early patient report of their symptoms and intervention. The knowledge gained from this approach will be used to identify solutions that can be scaled nationally to improve patient-reported symptom management and patient satisfaction with their clinical care.

Enrollment: 60 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All patients with lung cancer treated at VA Palo Alto. This includes all newly diagnosed patients and those under follow-up care.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients who do not anticipate receiving oncology care at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.
• Patients who are unable to consent.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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60 participants in 2 patient groups

Weekly telephone symptom assessment

Experimental group

Description:

Each patient who is enrolled in the intervention will receive a weekly phone call from the Research Assistant for a total of 9 months to assess symptoms using the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale. Results of the symptom assessments will be provided to the clinic staff (RN and MD) for review each week. Symptom assessments will be documented into an encrypted, HIPAA compliant digital platform which provides longitudinal symptom data management and also provides symptom assessment tools for the clinical team in their intervention strategies. In addition, patients will complete symptom and quality of life surveys at 0, 3, 6 and 9 months.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Weekly telephone symptom assessment

Control Arm

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients randomized to usual clinical care will receive standard of care for thoracic malignancies as provided by the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Patients will complete outcome surveys at 0, 3, 6, and 9 months.