In 2006, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) defined the delivery of multimodality treatment by a multidisciplinary team of appropriately skilled health professionals as an essential component of quality cancer care. Subsequent research shows that Multidisciplinary Conferences are associated with improved survival in breast, head and neck, ovarian and colorectal cancers. Despite these advantages, health care systems struggle to implement and sustain Multidisciplinary Conferences due to the heavy burden imposed by the required work processes.
To understand the quality impacts of a multidisciplinary cancer care approach, we collected metrics including cancer characteristics, care team utilization metrics, average attendance, quality metrics collected for accreditation, and clinical trials from 46,000 patient cases and 9,000 care providers.
Through this work, we found that:
Quality outcomes were measured by the number of cases discussed per session, patient access to a multidisciplinary discussion, and physician engagement. From baseline and across providers, we measured:
Looking at a single system, we measured: