Association of number of follow-up providers with outcomes in survivors of hematologic malignancies

Abstract

Studies examining follow-up care among cancer survivors have increased in number, and are mostly focused on who best provides care. It is not known whether having single or multiple physicians as follow-up providers has outcome implications. We prospectively studied the association between number of follow-up providers among survivors of hematologic malignancies and serious medical utilization (defined as emergency room visits or hospitalizations) within a 6-month period. Patients completing treatment (n = 314) were included. Patients seeing multiple follow-up providers were more likely to be younger, to reside farther away from the university hospital, to have prescription drug insurance, to have received prior cancer treatment, to have multiple myeloma, and to have undergone hematopoietic cell transplant as a part of cancer treatment. Multivariate analysis showed that the number of follow-up providers was not associated with serious medical utilization (odds ratio 1.29, 95% confidence interval 0.68–2.48, p = 0.44) after adjusting for patient factors. Our study showed that among survivors of hematologic malignancies, outcomes were not different for survivors who were seen by single or multiple follow-up providers.

Keywords:

• Follow-up care
• hematologic malignancies
• survivors

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Garrett Frost and Gregory McFadden for their help in processing the data used for this study, and also Janis Bruner, Sherry Anderson, and Lisa Muschall for their help in administrative aspects of the study.

Declaration of interest: This work was supported by the University of Nebraska Medical Center – Eppley Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA 036727 and the Medical Student Research Program.