Supportive Care Delivered by Telemedicine to Cancer Patients at Home

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Supportive Care; Cancer

Treatments: Other: Telemedicine follow-up visit; Other: In-person in clinic follow-up visit

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04136340

19-382

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study will test whether supportive care follow-up delivered to cancer patients at home by telemedicine ("virtual" medical visits using telecommunications technologies) is as effective as in-person supportive care visits in the clinic.

Full description

The protocol was developed and initially implemented when the standard of care for Supportive Care (and oncology) follow-up at MSK was in-person visiting and home telemedicine was only in an early stage of use at the institution. During the COVID-19 crisis, all outpatient Supportive Care visits and most oncology visits at MSK have been handled via telemedicine to protect patient (and staff) safety.

Enrollment: 33 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• age 18 years or older
• solid tumor of any type
• completed an initial in-person clinic visit (i.e. an IR/NV or AFX visit) at Rockefeller Outpatient Pavilion with Dr. Saldivar, Dr. Martin, Supportive Care physicians, or Andrea Dolan, a Supportive Care nurse practitioner
• planned for Supportive Care Service follow-up visits, but none yet completed
• enrolled on the MyMSK secure online patient portal and have access to the portal off site of MSK campuses
• resident of New York or New Jersey or Connecticut (clinicians may not be licensed in other states, as would be required for televisits to patients there)

Exclusion criteria

• Patients and informal caregivers who cannot communicate with clinicians/respond to instruments in English without the use of an interpreter

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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33 participants in 2 patient groups

In-person follow-up

Active Comparator group

Description:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, patients originally randomized to the in-person group received telemedicine visits. Thus, the researchers will expand our sample for these interviews to include patients who have completed at least 2 telemedicine follow-up visits whether they were originally randomized to the in-person group or the home telemedicine group.

Treatment:

Other: In-person in clinic follow-up visit

Home Telemedicine follow-up

Experimental group

Treatment:

Other: Telemedicine follow-up visit