Oncology Survivorship Care Clinics: Design and Implementation of Survivorship Care Delivery Systems at NCCN Member...

It is estimated that there are >18 million cancer survivors in the United States, and there is a growing number of survivorship programs across the country to care for these individuals. There is a clear need for survivorship care; however, evidence is still emerging on how to best operationalize the guidance from nationally recognized organizations and clinical practice guidelines.

The NCCN Best Practices Committee (BPC) recently conducted a survey to better understand survivorship clinics at NCCN Member Institutions. Representatives from 24 of the 33 NCCN Member Institutions (73%) submitted responses to the survey.

Although all responding centers see cancer survivors, most (92%) have ≥1 dedicated survivorship clinics. Of those centers with dedicated survivorship clinics (n=22), 9 (41%) reported general survivorship clinics for all cancer types, and 13 (59%) indicated their center offered ≥1 disease-specific survivorship clinics. Most centers (55%) use a mix of physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs; nurse practitioners and/or physician assistants) to staff survivorship clinics; however, 9 (41%) are staffed entirely by APPs and 1 (4%) is staffed entirely by physicians. The vast majority (91%) have dedicated scheduling templates, and most (73%) have dedicated clinic space for survivorship clinics. The referral process for survivorship clinics varies across centers, with 16 (73%) using algorithms, guidelines, or pathways to determine when a patient is referred to a survivorship clinic. Findings may reflect the evolution of survivorship care and indicate a move toward standardizing which patients are seen and when. It is notable that >50% of institutions reported a model in which they follow survivors for their lifetime.

Given the number of patients impacted by cancer, these data highlight the need to continue refining how survivorship care models are integrated into cancer centers to best serve patients with cancer and cancer survivors.