Shared Medical Appointments for Prostate Cancer Active Surveillance Follow-Up Visits.

PURPOSE

To accommodate for the rapidly increasing patient volume and follow-up visits of men with prostate cancer on active surveillance (AS), we carried out a quality improvement project to secure high-quality care and enhance patient experience.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We proposed an innovative clinic systems redesign - "Shared Medical Appointments" (SMAs) - in which multiple patients were seen in a group format at the same time by the health care team led by a urologist leading the Institution's AS program.

RESULTS

We piloted four SMAs during July-November 2019. Running the SMAs was feasible and improved the contact time for each patient while at the same time being time- and resource efficient for the healthcare providers and using the standard billing processes. The group dynamic was open and pleasant. The majority of patients rated their overall experience with SMA as excellent. Almost all patients responded that they were likely or very likely to attend another SMA in the future. All patients said that they would either definitely or probably recommend this visit type to a friend of family member with prostate cancer. Most patients rated their overall satisfaction with the SMA as extremely high.

CONCLUSIONS

Utilizing SMAs for AS follow-up visits was feasible and acceptable. Our promising findings suggest that SMAs can ensure high-quality patient care. Well-controlled studies comparing SMAs to individual usual care visits should be conducted with endpoints including knowledge, patient and staff satisfaction, anxiety and quality-of-life outcomes, AS adherence, process measures and resource utilization.