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Evaluating the effect of clinical care pathways on quality of cancer care: analysis of breast, colon and rectal cancer pathways

  • Original Article – Clinical Oncology
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Substantial gaps exist between clinical practice and evidence-based cancer care, potentially leading to adverse clinical outcomes and decreased quality of life for cancer patients. This study aimed to evaluate the usefulness of clinical pathways as a tool for improving quality of cancer care, using breast, colon, and rectal cancer pathways as demonstrations.

Methods

Newly diagnosed patients with invasive breast, colon, and rectal cancer were enrolled as pre-pathway groups, while patients with the same diagnoses treated according to clinical pathways were recruited for post-pathway groups.

Results

Compliance with preoperative core biopsy or fine-needle aspiration, utilization of sentinel lymph node biopsy, and proportion of patients whose tumor hormone receptor status was stated in pathology report were significantly increased after implementation of clinical pathway for breast cancer. For colon cancer, compliance with two care processes was significantly improved: surgical resection with anastomosis and resection of at least 12 lymph nodes. Regarding rectal cancer, there was a significant increase in compliance with preoperative evaluation of depth of tumor invasion, total mesorectal excision treatment of middle- or low-position rectal cancer, and proportion of patients who had undergone rectal cancer surgery whose pathology report included margin status. Moreover, total length of hospital stay was decreased remarkably for all three cancer types, and postoperative complications remained unchanged following implementation of the clinical pathways.

Conclusions

Clinical pathways can improve compliance with standard care by implementing evidence-based quality indicators in daily practice, which could serve as a useful tool for narrowing the gap between clinical practice and evidence-based care.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the financial support of National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Funding

This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 81273183).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics, Public Health College, Harbin Medical University, 157 Baojian Road, Harbin, 150081, Heilongjiang, People’s Republic of China

    Han Bao, Fengjuan Yang, Shaofei Su, Xinyu Wang, Meiqi Zhang, Yaming Xiao, Hao Jiang, Jiaying Wang & Meina Liu

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  1. Han Bao
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  2. Fengjuan Yang
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  4. Xinyu Wang
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Correspondence to Meina Liu.

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Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Bao, H., Yang, F., Su, S. et al. Evaluating the effect of clinical care pathways on quality of cancer care: analysis of breast, colon and rectal cancer pathways. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 142, 1079–1089 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-015-2106-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-015-2106-z

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