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

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).