Investigators from the SWOG Cancer Research Network have developed and validated a risk prediction model for identifying which patients with advanced cancer who are enrolled in clinical trials are at highest risk for unplanned emergency room (ER) visits and hospital stays. Determining which patients are at significantly higher risk could inform interventions to reduce the need for such visits, improving care quality and reducing costs. The work will be delivered as an oral presentation by Dawn L.
Hershman, MD, MS, at the 2024 ASCO Quality Care Symposium , which takes place September 27–28 in San Francisco. Dr. Hershman is the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, deputy director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, and group co-chair-elect of SWOG Cancer Research Network, a clinical trials group.
"If we can identify patients easily who have the highest risk of acute care use," Hershman said, "we can target interventions that have been proven to be beneficial, such as active symptom monitoring, and we can better study new strategies to mitigate this risk." Hershman's team linked Medicare claims data to data from six SWOG advanced cancer clinical trials to identify hospital stays or ER visits by enrolled patients. They found that more than two-thirds (67.
5%) of the 1,397 patients whose data they analyzed had made at least one such visit within one year of their trial enrollment. The researche.