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. 2021 Sep;8(5):541-545.
doi: 10.1097/upj.0000000000000247.

Shared Medical Appointments for Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Follow-Up Visits

Sigrid V Carlsson  1   2   3 , Corinne Clauss  1 , Nicole Benfante  1 , Michael Manasia  1 , Tina Sollazzo  1 , Janine Lynch  1 , Jodi Frank  1 , Safia Quadri  1 , Xin Lin  1 , Andrew J Vickers  2 , Behfar Ehdaie  1
Affiliations

Shared Medical Appointments for Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Follow-Up Visits

Sigrid V Carlsson et al. Urol Pract. 2021 Sep.

Abstract

Purpose: To accommodate for the rapidly increasing patient volume and follow-up visits of men with prostate cancer on active surveillance (AS), we carried out a quality improvement project to secure high-quality care and enhance patient experience.

Materials and methods: We proposed an innovative clinic systems redesign - "Shared Medical Appointments" (SMAs) - in which multiple patients were seen in a group format at the same time by the health care team led by a urologist leading the Institution's AS program.

Results: We piloted four SMAs during July-November 2019. Running the SMAs was feasible and improved the contact time for each patient while at the same time being time- and resource efficient for the healthcare providers and using the standard billing processes. The group dynamic was open and pleasant. The majority of patients rated their overall experience with SMA as excellent. Almost all patients responded that they were likely or very likely to attend another SMA in the future. All patients said that they would either definitely or probably recommend this visit type to a friend of family member with prostate cancer. Most patients rated their overall satisfaction with the SMA as extremely high.

Conclusions: Utilizing SMAs for AS follow-up visits was feasible and acceptable. Our promising findings suggest that SMAs can ensure high-quality patient care. Well-controlled studies comparing SMAs to individual usual care visits should be conducted with endpoints including knowledge, patient and staff satisfaction, anxiety and quality-of-life outcomes, AS adherence, process measures and resource utilization.

Keywords: active surveillance; patient satisfaction; prostate cancer; shared medical appointments.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest disclosures: A.V. is named on a patent for a statistical method to detect prostate cancer. The method has been commercialized by OPKO Health. A.V. receives royalties from sales of the test. A.V. has stock options in OPKO Health. He has received consulting fees from Ingishtec and Steba. B.E. reports consultant fees from Myriad Genetics and honorarium from Koelis, outside the submitted work. No other author has any conflicts of interest to declare.

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