Cancer patients' experiences with urgent referrals to cancer patient pathways.
Eur J Cancer Care (Engl)
; 28(1): e12927, 2019 Jan.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30303244
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
We aimed to explore whether cancer patients urgently referred to a cancer patient pathway (CPP) (CPP referred) by a general practitioner report experiences of pre-diagnosis cancer care differently than patients not referred to a CPP (non-CPP referred).METHODS:
Data were collected from cross-sectional questionnaire surveys among cancer patients and their GPs and linked to National registries. Poisson regression was used to generate adjusted prevalence ratios (PR) to compare reported experiences.RESULTS:
The study included 2,256 individuals. CPP referred patients reported more positive overall experiences of the pre-diagnosis phase (p < 0.001). Overall, CPP referred patients were 21% more likely than non-CPP referred patients to report a positive experience after adjustment for case-mix, comorbidity, disposable household income and educational level (PR = 1.21 [95% CI 1.11-1.30]). The difference decreased to 14% when adjusted for Quality Deviations (PR = 1.14 [95% CI 1.06-1.23]) and to 11% when adjusted for diagnostic interval (PR = 1.11 [95% CI 1.02-1.20]).CONCLUSION:
Our findings suggest that CPP referred cancer patients have better experiences of pre-diagnosis cancer care compared to non-CPP referred patients. A substantial part of the difference could be attributed to shorter diagnostic intervals and/or the absence of quality deviations among CPP patients, which reveals the potential for generally improving cancer patients' experiences by seamless and optimised diagnostic pathways.Palavras-chave
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Encaminhamento e Consulta
/
Sistema de Registros
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Procedimentos Clínicos
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Neoplasias
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2019
Tipo de documento:
Article