Toward Improving the Quality of Cancer Care: Addressing the Interfaces of Primary & Oncology-Related Subspecialty Care

A number of reports in the last decade, including the classic Institute of Medicine reports on the quality chasm, have identified key elements and deconstructed processes of care that must be addressed to ensure quality of care. This supplement moves beyond that important initial work in distinguishing between the steps in care that are the usual focus of guidelines to focusing on the connections between these steps that have seldom been examined in research or addressed in practice. Those connections, termed interfaces of care in this supplement, involve communication within and across a number of groups, including patients and their families, primary care and oncological specialty care physicians, and other affiliated health-care professionals who make up the team of providers. This supplement raises issues about these interfaces that are directly relevant to identifying how anticipated health-care delivery changes could be restructured to consciously address some very specific gaps in the process of care. This supplement digs deeper into this aspect of the cancer care process and highlights future research opportunities.

Complete citation:

Taplin SH, Rodgers AB, Chollette V. Toward improving the quality of cancer care: addressing the interfaces of primary and oncology-related subspecialty care. J Natl Cancer Inst Monogr 2010 April;40:1-110.