Background: The GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer (GO2) is transforming what it means to live with lung cancer. Empowered patients are more engaged and better equipped to navigate and manage their disease. GO2 offers many patient support programs, including patient handbooks, monthly Living Room support series, personalized navigation, and the Lung Cancer Registry. In addition to patient education, GO2 has a growing network of community hospitals recognized as care continuum Centers of Excellence (COEs) that act as a channel to reach patients and caregivers with education and support. The COE program includes community hospitals that are delivering best practices in lung cancer care, including having a dedicated nurse navigator and multidisciplinary team. The program seeks to ensure that lung cancer patients receive the highest quality of care with support opportunities close to home.
Objective: The aim of the study is to evaluate and understand how COEs are using GO2 patient education and support resources and how to better support patients with more targeted information.
Methods: GO2 Foundation evaluates the benefit of its patient support programs through the annual COE Impact Study. The COE Impact Study is a comprehensive comparative analysis of COE member and nonmember institutions evaluating both quantitative and qualitative performance metrics and is designed to be longitudinal. The 2018 analysis included 17 COE and 19 non-COE community hospitals. ZoomRx, a healthcare analytics company, manages the online survey tool, data collection, and analysis. The survey was deployed online to nurse navigators at each site and included questions about the utilization and timing of resources. Navigators were asked about the percentage of patients who were informed/received the resources, when they were used, which they find most valuable, and which they hope to learn more about. For non-COE respondents, the survey assessed how GO2 could be beneficial to staff and patients.
Results: COEs report using resources with 37% of patients, and 92% report that they do so at the time of diagnosis. Ninety-two percent of the navigators indicated that the handbooks are the most utilized and valued patient resource. Living Rooms are the second most utilized and valued service for patients, as reported by 75% of respondents. There is lower utilization of other resources, such as the Registry and Patient Services team, but higher interest to learn more about those. Of the non-COEs, just 2 of the 19 report using GO2 resources. Non-COE respondents indicated that GO2 could be beneficial by providing patient/family education, emotional support, treatment management, education about cost management, and by providing services for quality of life.
Conclusion: Opportunity exists to drive up utilization of GO2 resources, reach more patients within COEs and non-COEs, and educate navigators about the value of these programs to patients and caregivers. Identifying ways to survey patients for their feedback on GO2 resources would help to round out this study. Go2 is positioned to work with the COE programs and other hospitals to augment navigators in addressing ways to empower patients and caregivers with education, support services, and resources.
Sources
- Fine L, Hicks D. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation patient education handbooks fill a health literacy void for patients and nurse navigators. J Thor Oncol. 2017;12(suppl 2):S2313-S2314. Abstract P311-003.
- Institute of Medicine. Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2013.
