Journal of oncology practice
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Documentation of a patient's preferred code status is a critical outcome of advance care planning. Although there is agreement that code status is valuable information, little progress has been made to increase the incidence of documented code status within the medical record in an outpatient setting. Incidence of code status documentation in the community oncology setting has not been studied. ⋯ Code status documentation is one of several program performance measures. During the 14-month period from August 1, 2013, through September 30, 2014, collective sites participating in My Choices, My Wishes included discrete code status documentation within the medical record for 5,467 patients with metastatic disease. Although much work remains, early results show promise for improvement in incidence of code status documentation within health records in the outpatient setting.
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Curative chemotherapy for breast cancer is associated with significant toxicities including emergency room (ER) visits and hospital admissions (HAs), events that are underreported in clinical trials. This study examined the reasons for, and factors associated with, ER visits and HA after curative chemotherapy for breast cancer in a tertiary Ontario hospital. ⋯ Future research should focus on identifying the patient, provider, and health system factors associated with ER visits and HAs after chemotherapy for breast cancer, to minimize them and lessen the burden on the health care system.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), under the Hospitals Readmissions Reductions Program, may withhold regular reimbursements for excessive 30-day readmissions for select diagnoses. Such penalties imply that some readmissions reflect poor clinical decision making or care during the initial hospitalization. We examined factors related to potentially preventable readmissions in CMS patients at a tertiary cancer hospital. ⋯ Most unplanned readmissions to a tertiary cancer hospital are related to progression of disease, new diagnoses, and procedure complications. Minimizing readmissions in complex cancer patients is challenging. Larger multi-institutional datasets are needed to determine a reasonable standard for expected readmission rates.