The Association of Community Cancer Centers and AstraZeneca announced a collaboration to support a national quality care initiative for patients with stage III and stage IV NSCLC.
To improve interdisciplinary communication and care coordination for patients with stage III and IV NSCLC, the ACCC, along with partner organizations: the American College of Chest Physicians, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and LUNGevity Foundation, is forming a multi-phase initiative: Fostering Excellence in Care and Outcomes in Patients with Stage III and IV NSCLC.
This initiative will identify barriers to care excellence and provide guidance and support for process improvement projects centered around issues key to advancing optimal care for this patient population.
The project will include process improvement models developed and tested across a variety of care settings from large academic institutions to smaller community programs or practices. The project is supported by AstraZeneca.
An initial survey conducted for the project yielded robust cross-discipline responses providing data on current practice patterns, gaps and barriers to care coordination and communication, and other systemic processes that can hinder timely adoption of advances in staging, biomarker testing, and treatment planning for NSCLC.
The project’s steering committee will guide the selection of six cancer programs to serve as process improvement sites. The committee, composed of leaders from multiple disciplines committed to improving care in stage III and IV NSCLC, is chaired by David Spigel, chief scientific officer; director, Lung Cancer Research Program; principal investigator, Sarah Cannon Research Institute.
Facilitated by ACCC, the six selected sites will create and execute process improvement models aimed at overcoming identified barriers to excellence in care for patients with these NSCLC stages. The models tested will be applicable across care settings.
