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. 2024 Feb 2;29(2):e290-e293.
doi: 10.1093/oncolo/oyad313.

Trajectory of Healthcare Contact Days for Veterans With Advanced Gastrointestinal Malignancy

Whitney V Johnson  1 , Quan H Phung  1 , Vishal R Patel  2 , Alexander K Tsai  1 , Nivedita Arora  3 , Mark A Klein  3 , Anders D Westanmo  4 , Anne H Blaes  1 , Arjun Gupta  1
Affiliations

Trajectory of Healthcare Contact Days for Veterans With Advanced Gastrointestinal Malignancy

Whitney V Johnson et al. Oncologist. .

Abstract

How and where patients with advanced cancer facing limited survival spend their time is critical. Healthcare contact days (days with healthcare contact outside the home) offer a patient-centered and practical measure of how much of a person's life is consumed by healthcare. We retrospectively analyzed contact days among decedent veterans with stage IV gastrointestinal cancer at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Healthcare System from 2010 to 2021. Among 468 decedents, the median overall survival was 4 months. Patients spent 1 in 3 days with healthcare contact. Over the course of illness, the percentage of contact days followed a "U-shaped" pattern, with an initial post-diagnosis peak, a lower middle trough, and an eventual rise as patients neared the end-of-life. Contact days varied by clinical factors and by sociodemographics. These data have important implications for improving care delivery, such as through care coordination and communicating expected burdens to and supporting patients and care partners.

Keywords: contact days; gastrointestinal cancer; time toxicity; veterans affairs.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors indicated no financial relationships.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Percent of contact days from diagnosis to death for decedents with stage IV gastrointestinal malignancies for entire cohort (A), and grouped by duration of overall survival (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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