Adult SOC
In 2014, The Coleman Foundation launched the Supportive Oncology Collaborative (SOC), an ambitious initiative that builds upon its 35 years of experience to improve cancer care.
The Institute of Medicine’s 2013 report, “Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis,” set in motion recommendations that include supportive oncology. With few standards available, the Coleman Foundation engaged 135 medical professionals from 25 Chicago area cancer care institutions to create and implement new screening tools for care concerns and standards of care for cancer patients and their loved ones.
Through four cycles of funding, the Coleman Foundation enabled more than 16 cancer programs to implement comprehensive screening tools and improve care delivery processes. Separate initiatives focused on adult, adolescent and young adult, and pediatric cancer programs. The work produced by the SOC Collaborative improved patient, family, and caregiver access to support during and after cancer treatment with the creation of new supportive oncology screening tools and patient and provider resources. As a result, outcomes were promising; academic institutions, teaching hospitals, and safety-net hospitals hired additional medical staff and began implementing additional supportive care practices to a greater number of cancer patients.
Objectives
CANCER PATIENTS
1
Are regularly screened for distress, psychosocial support and palliative care needs
2
Receive appropriate services (from diagnosis through survivorship and end-of-life) from multiple, high- quality service providers that have core competencies in delivering cancer care and support
3
Are informed and empowered, along with their families, by personalized patient care sequence document(s), which are adjusted throughout cancer treatment and supportive care
The Coleman Foundation Collaborative is a care delivery/process quality improvement initiative.
Roadmap for Improving Supportive Oncology Services
The Supportive Oncology Collaborative participants identified opportunities and gaps in supportive and survivorship care, depicted in the diagram on the left.
To address these gaps, three inter-institution collaborative design teams iteratively developed and piloted screening tools, follow-up processes, provider training, and quality metrics, each providing expertise and content from their respective areas of focus: Distress/Psychosocial, Survivorship, and Palliative Care and Hospice Referral.
Tools, processes, and training are in various stages of implementation at participating quality improvement sites.
PARTICIPATING QUALITY IMPROVEMENT SITES
Mercy Hospital and
Medical Center
Mount Sinai Hospital
John H. Stroger, Jr.
Hospital of Cook County
Rush University
Medical Center
University of
Chicago Medicine
University of Illinois Hospital
& Health Sciences System
Jesse Brown VA
Medical Center
Loyola University
Medical Center
Northwestern Medicine
Methodist Medical
Center of Illinois
Collaborative Outcomes
EVIDENCE-BASED SCREENING TOOLS, FOLLOW-UP CARE PROCESSES
26-MODULE SUPPORTIVE ONCOLOGY CARE EDUCATION SERIES FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, CME APPROVED
CREATED SELF HELP RESOURCES FOR PATIENTS AND CARE SEQUENCE EXPLANATION TOOLS
DATA COLLECTION AND QUALITY METRICS