Associations Between Oncology Outreach and Patient-Sharing Measures of Care Coordination.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Oncology outreach is a common strategy for addressing cancer workforce shortages, where traveling oncologists commute across clinical settings to extend their services. Despite its known benefits specifically for rural patients, oncology outreach reallocates physician resources to satellite clinics and may negatively impact the coordination of cancer care.

Methods

In this retrospective study, we identified patients with incident breast, colorectal, and lung cancers from 2016-2019 nationwide Medicare claims and linked them to oncologists using Part B. We considered encounters occurring outside the physician's primary hospital service area as "outreach visits" and calculated the proportion of outreach visits by oncology specialty for contiguous US hospital referral

SUBMITTER: Scodari BT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11632124 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature