title: Advanced lung cancer patients' experience with continuity of care and supportive care needs.
abstract: As cancer care becomes increasingly complex, the ability to coordinate this care is more difficult for health care providers, patients and their caregivers alike. Despite the widely recognized need for improving continuity and coordination of care, the relationship of continuity of care with patient outcomes has yet to be elucidated. Our study's main finding is that the Continuity and Coordination subscale of the widely used Picker System of Ambulatory Cancer Care Survey is able to distinguish between lung cancer patients with unmet supportive care needs and those without. Specifically, this study shows a new association between this widely implemented continuity and coordination survey and the 'psychological needs' domain, as well as the 'health system and information' domains of supportive care needs. The finding provides support for the idea that interventions to improve continuity may impact tangible indicators of patient care such as supportive care needs being met. The study focuses attention on continuity of care as an important aspect of optimizing outcomes in cancer care.
authors.affiliation: Division of Palliative Care, University of Toronto, Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, 60 Murray St., 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5T 3L9. amna.husain@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Amna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Husain
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Barbera
authors.forename: Doris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Howell
authors.forename: Rahim
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Moineddin
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bezjak
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sussman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000592:standards; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D005791:Patient Care / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care