Table 5.
ASCO Recommendations for Achieving High-Quality Cancer Survivorship Care
| Recommendation |
| Clinical guidance |
| Develop and disseminate guidance to standardize the long-term follow-up care of adult cancer survivors |
| Develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, assessment tools, and screening instruments to help identify and manage late effects of cancer and its treatment |
| Make this guidance accessible to oncology providers in all practice settings as well as to primary care providers |
| Use general health guidelines/guidance existing outside the oncology sphere when providing care for cancer survivors |
| Models of survivorship care |
| Promote successful models of survivorship care and tools that optimize the transition process between oncology and primary care providers |
| Promote a shared-care model for survivorship care that includes communication between the oncology specialist and PCP and successful transition of the patient from the oncology setting to primary care setting post treatment, using a risk-stratified approach as part of the survivorship care plan |
| Partner with other organizations to support demonstration programs to test models of coordinated, interdisciplinary survivorship care in diverse communities and across systems of care |
| Assuring high-quality survivorship care |
| Establish standardized ways to monitor and improve the quality of survivorship care provided to patients |
| Promote strategies to ensure that every survivor receives a written coordinated treatment summary and follow-up care plan and that providers are reimbursed for this service by third-party payers |
| Encourage all oncology practice settings to implement quality improvement programs, such as QOPI, to monitor and improve care for all cancer survivors |
| Develop quality of survivorship care measures through public-private partnerships and quality assurance programs (eg, QOPI) to monitor and improve the care that all survivors receive, and integrate these measures as key components of the oncology rapid-learning system |
| Provider education |
| Expand survivorship-related education and training opportunities for oncology providers that promote interdisciplinary, shared-care models of survivorship care delivery |
| Promote the evidence-based use of survivorship care plans and other tools to increase communication, coordination of care, and provider confidence in providing survivorship care within the shared-care model |
| Advocate for increased medical education curriculum funding to provide all providers (including oncologists and PCPs) access to adequate tools, resources, and knowledge to care for the growing number of survivors |
| Education for survivors and their families |
| Increase education for cancer survivors and their families about information that can affect their survivorship |
| Identify and promote action-oriented messages via the ASCO patient education and communication channels for survivors on the topics of health and wellness, secondary disease prevention, and psychosocial coping |
| Encourage providers to identify expert and reputable survivor referral resources for their practice, with the goal of ensuring survivors and their families are well educated and capable of advocating for their best interests throughout their survivorship |
| Research |
| Increase survivorship research and expand mechanisms for its conduct |
| Assess survivorship research portfolios funded by federal, state, and private entities, identify knowledge gaps related to underrepresented patient populations and health-rel ated outcomes of interest, and build a strategy to address these gaps |
| Leverage the NCI cooperative group reorganization to advance a cancer survivorship agenda within the context of NCI-sponsored clinical trials |
| Policy and advocacy |
| Ensure that cancer survivors receive the full range of services necessary to treat their disease by promoting policies to improve the quality of survivorship care for patients and their families |
| Advocate for federal and state policymakers to act to ensure that all cancer survivors have access to adequate and affordable health insurance |
| Improve Medicare reimbursement to cover survivorship services provided by health care providers, including services related to surveillance, prevention, management of late effects, and care coordination |
| Define a set of essential health benefits for cancer survivors, and advocate for coverage of these services |
| Educate policymakers on what cancer survivorship is and why it is important, and advocate for legislation to enhance survivorship care and funding of research to improve this care |
| Advocate for Congress to push the CDC, other collaborating institutions, and states to develop comprehensive cancer control plans that include consideration of survivorship care and to promote the implementation, evaluation, and refinement of existing cancer control plans |
| Advocate for increased funding for survivorship research to aid in the creation of evidence-based comprehensive survivorship care guidelines |
Abbreviations: ASCO, American Society of Clinical Oncology; CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; NCI, National Cancer Institute; PCP, primary care provider; QOPI, Quality Oncology Practice Initiative.