Evaluating the CAREchart@Home™ Program for Enhancing After-hours Cancer Care

January 14, 2020 updated by: Women's College Hospital

Evaluating the CAREchart@Home™ Program for Enhancing After-hours Care of Cancer Patients in Ontario: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

The objective of the current project is to pilot the evaluation of the health and economic benefits of having online access to health information in the context of providing telemedicine support for oncology patients receiving outpatient systemic therapy in Ontario. This pilot study will determine the feasibility of conducting a full-scale randomized controlled trial that could definitively determine whether the addition of access to patients' health information in the after-hours telemedicine program reduces emergency department use, affect patients' experience of care, or improve patient-reported health.

The study will be conducted at, and with patients from, the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre (SRCC) at Southlake. Eligible patients will be adults (at least 18 years of age) with a confirmed cancer diagnosis, and initiating or continuing treatment with systemic therapy at the SRCC. Prospective patients will be randomized across two arms. Recruitment will take place during a 6.5-month recruitment period and followed up for a period of 3 months.

Study Overview

Status

Terminated

Conditions

Detailed Description

Advances in systemic therapy (including oral or intravenously injected anti-cancer drugs) have led to the improvement in overall survival for many cancers and more than half of patients diagnosed with cancer will receive some form of systemic therapy. Unfortunately, Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) data indicates that up to 50% of patients will experience treatment-related side effects resulting in a visit to the emergency department (ED) or admission to hospital within 4 weeks of receiving chemotherapy - the most common form of systemic therapy. Despite differences in international healthcare systems, it is useful to note that one US-based study found that approximately 25% of total ED costs during cancer treatment could be potentially preventable, presenting a significant opportunity to lower health system costs related to cancer care.

While most systemic therapy is delivered in cancer clinics which operate during business hours, data shows that a significant portion of unplanned ED visits and hospital admissions occur after-hours, that is, on evenings and weekends. One of the strategic priorities of CCO's 2014-2019 Systemic Treatment Provincial Plan was to reduce ED utilization through enhanced management of toxicity due to treatment with one avenue being the provision of symptom management services through alternate models of care, especially during after-hour time periods.

In July 2016, Bayshore Healthcare Ltd. introduced a program to provide after-hours symptom management support for oncology patients receiving systemic therapy. The program runs Monday to Friday 6:00pm - 8:30am, and Saturday 8:30am to Monday 8:30am, including statutory holidays and involves highly trained oncology nursing staff answering telephone calls from patients related to symptom management. In two separate partnerships in 2016, Southlake Regional Health Centre partnered with Bayshore HealthCare Ltd. to pilot the after-hours telephone symptom management program and also initiated a concurrent, but completely separate pilot with MedChart Inc. to offer Southlake patients (and their circle of care) online access to medical records, primarily outside the cancer program. MedChart's technology is a cloud-based, online Consumer Moderated Health Information Exchange (CME) network that connects to healthcare providers and provides access to health records in any format.

While at least one study has reported a reduction in ED visits, over four years, after the introduction of telephone support with physician access to medical records, the causal pathway connecting the provision of the medical records with reduced ED visits and health system costs is largely unexplored. As such, it is unclear whether there are outcomes, other than ED utilization, that may also be scientifically interesting and/or more feasible to capture. Furthermore, there are no recent studies that prospectively compared the provision of after-hours services with and without medical records.

The objective of the current project is to pilot the evaluation of the health and economic benefits of having online access to health information in the context of providing telemedicine support for oncology patients receiving outpatient systemic therapy in Ontario. This pilot study will determine the feasibility of conducting a full-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) that could definitively determine whether the addition of access to patients' health information in the after-hours telemedicine program reduces emergency department use, affects patients' experience of care, or improves patient-reported health. The evaluation will focus on the shared electronic patient record (provided by MedChart) in the context of Bayshore's after-hours telemedicine program (CAREchart@home).

This will be a single-centre, non-blinded, two-arm pilot RCT. Once recruited, patients will be randomized to one of two study arms: (1) the control arm, which constitutes usual care - access to after-hours telemedicine (AH); and (2) the intervention arm - access to after-hours telemedicine with some cancer-related personal health information (AH-PHI), i.e. CAREchart@home™. Recruitment will take place during a 6.5-month recruitment time period and all patients will be followed up for a period of 3 months during which patients will complete a series of questionnaires and data from institutional records will be compiled.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

105

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

    • Ontario
      • Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, L3Y 2P9
        • Southlake Regional Health Centre

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years to 100 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Confirmed cancer diagnosis (all cancers, all stages)
  • Initiating or continuing treatment with systemic therapy (oral or injected/IV; excluding hormonal therapy for breast or prostate cancer) at Stronach Regional Cancer Centre at Southlake

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Being treated with radiation
  • Unable to read or understand spoken English (Required for completing the questionnaires)
  • Unable to utilize the after-hours services due to cognitive impairment

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: After-hours care
Patients in the after-hours care (AH) group will receive the usual (telemedicine) care. That is, they will have the option to call the after-hours centre and receive help from the oncology nurses using the COSTaRS practice guides to manage their after-hours symptoms.
Experimental: After-hours care w/personal health info
Patients in the after-hours care with personal health information (AH-PHI) group will also receive the usual (telemedicine) care. However, if they call the telemedicine service, the oncology nurses will have access to some of their personal health information from the cancer centre (i.e., a shared electronic patient record) via the MedChart platform.
MedChart allows access to a shared electronic patient record that contains selected information related to a patient's cancer treatment. If a patient contacts the after-hours telemedicine service, the oncology nurse will have access to this shared record
Other Names:
  • MedChart

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Proportion of patients willing to be randomized
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
The proportion of patients willing to be randomized
9.5 Months
Proportion of enrolled patients lost to follow up
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
The proportion of enrolled patients lost to follow up in each randomized group
9.5 Months
Number of attempted questionnaires relative to number of questionnaires that should have been completed
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
The number of completed questionnaires for both patient participants and healthcare provider participants in relation to the total number of times a questionnaire should have been completed
9.5 Months
Number of completed questionnaires relative to number of questionnaires that should have been completed
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
The number of attempted questionnaires for both patient participants and healthcare provider participants in relation to the total number of times a questionnaire should have been completed
9.5 Months
Percent of total emergency department (ED) visits reported that occurred at Southlake
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
Comparison of total self-reported ED visits to total ED visits recorded in institutional records
9.5 Months
Time to complete questionnaire battery
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
Estimation of time required for patients to complete the questionnaires at each timepoint
9.5 Months
Completion rate for satisfaction survey
Time Frame: 9.5 Months
Percent of callers for whom Bayshore's satisfaction survey results were obtained
9.5 Months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Self-reported health service utilization
Time Frame: 3 Months
Total number of encounters with the health system for any concern, including cancer-related symptom management.
3 Months
Hospital-reported health service utilization: Emergency Department Visits
Time Frame: 3 Months
The total number of emergency department visits
3 Months
Hospital-reported health service utilization: Outcomes of ED Visits
Time Frame: 3 Months
The outcomes of the emergency department visits
3 Months
Hospital-reported health service utilization: Length of Hospital Stay
Time Frame: 3 Months
The total length of stay for any admission to the hospital
3 Months
Edmonton Symptom Assessment System-revised (ESAS-r) Scale
Time Frame: 3 Months
Self-reported measurement of the severity of nine common symptoms of cancer, at the time of questionnaire completion
3 Months
Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy - General (FACT-G) Scale
Time Frame: 3 Months
Patient-reported assessment of health-related quality of life, over the past week, for patients undergoing cancer therapy
3 Months
Prompt Access to Care (PAC) Scale
Time Frame: 3 Months
Measurement of a cancer patient's perception of their ability to reach or see an oncology professional, as required, at various times of the day and on different days of the week
3 Months
Continuity of Care (CoC) Scale
Time Frame: 3 Months
Measurement of a cancer patient's perception of continuity of care across all healthcare professionals in the cancer care continuum
3 Months
Prevented health service utilization
Time Frame: 3 Months
Frequency of reports of a health service that a patient would have accessed if they did not have access to the after-hours service
3 Months
Efficiency of after-hours service advice
Time Frame: 3 Months
Proportion of calls that were handled by telephone advice alone, that is, those calls that were not followed by any unplanned referrals or visits to other healthcare professional within 2 weeks of the after-hours service encounter
3 Months
Patient confidence
Time Frame: 3 Months
Patients' level of confidence in the advice they received through the after-hours service
3 Months
Perceived reliability of the after-hours service encounter
Time Frame: 3 Months
Patients' perceived reliability of the after-hours service encounter which will be measured as agreement with a statement regarding the similarity of the encounter to an in-person visit
3 Months
Provider confidence (measured using a modified version of the C-scale)
Time Frame: 3 Months
Assessment of a nurse's confidence in relation to various aspects of the triage encounter
3 Months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Sacha Bhatia, MD, FRCPC, MBA, Women's College Hospital
  • Principal Investigator: Peter Anglin, MD, FRCPC, MBA, Southlake Regional Health Centre

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

February 1, 2018

Primary Completion (Actual)

May 9, 2019

Study Completion (Actual)

May 9, 2019

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 4, 2019

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 14, 2020

First Posted (Actual)

January 18, 2020

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

January 18, 2020

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 14, 2020

Last Verified

January 1, 2020

More Information

Terms related to this study

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

No

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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