Telehealth in Improving Quality of Life in Patients During Post Radiation Therapy Visits

Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University37 enrolled

Overview

This pilot clinical trial studies how well telehealth works in patients during post radiation therapy visits. A telehealth virtual office visit can be performed from the patient's home or workplace, decreasing time spent traveling to visit site, time spent in waiting room, and cost to patient. Studying telehealth may improve quality of life in patients during post radiation therapy visit.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: I. To examine feasibility of conducting a trial comparing a telehealth visit and an in person office visit. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. To examine patient satisfaction, patient assessment of physician communication during a telehealth visit. II. To examine patient distrust in the healthcare system following a telehealth visit. III. To examine physician ability to perform a patient assessment during a telehealth visit. IV. To examine physician perceptions of telehealth visits. V. To examine monetary and time cost to patients for telehealth visit. VI. To calculate clinic savings derived from telehealth visits. OUTLINE: Patients undergo their first post-treatment visit as a virtual telehealth visit using the JeffConnect application.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

Conditions

Malignant Neoplasm

Interventions

TelemedicineOTHER

Attend a virtual visit via the JeffConnect telehealth app

Questionnaire AdministrationOTHER

Ancillary studies

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Patients currently undergoing or planned to start radiation treatment with curative, adjuvant or palliative intent * Karnofsky performance status (KPS) score \>= 60 * Patients must be capable to read and speak English and provide study specific informed consent prior to study entry * Patients must have access to a computer or smartphone and internet connection at home on which they would be willing to do a telehealth study * Pennsylvania or New Jersey residents \*Telehealth visits for New Jersey residents will only be performed by physicians with a current medical license issued by the state of New Jersey. Exclusion Criteria: * KPS \< 60% * No access to a computer, smartphone or internet * Unable to read and/or speak English * Decisionally impaired patients * Patients not residing in Pennsylvania or New Jersey

Locations (1)

Thomas Jefferson University

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Feasibility of Conducting a Future Randomized Clinical Trial Comparing Telehealth and in Person Visits (i.e., Rate of Accrual)

The number of patients accrued each month will be analyzed via Poisson regression. The mean (monthly rate) will be estimated and tested against the null value of 4 patients per month using a 1-sided test with alpha 0.05. The proportion of enrolled subjects who are lost to follow-up will also be summarized.

Time frame: 24 months from first patient enrolled

Secondary Outcomes

Patient Satisfaction With Telehealth Visits as Measured by the Patients Satisfaction With Cancer Care Score

Patients Satisfaction with Cancer Care score is an 18-item questionnaire with answers on a 5-point Likert scale. Lower scores are associated with higher satisfaction with caner care. The average will be computed and tested against the null value of 75 using a one-sample t-test with alpha 0.05.

Time frame: 4 months from enrollment

Number of Patients Satisfied With Physician Communication During Telehealth Visit

14 item communication assessment tool (CAT). The CAT addresses specifically patient satisfaction with key aspects of communication and interpersonal skills and items are scored on a 1-5 scale where 1 = poor and 5 = excellent and a higher score would indicate better communication skills

Time frame: 4 months from enrollment

Patient Distrust in the Healthcare System as Measured by the Health Care System Distrust Scale in Relation to Privacy of Medical Record (MR)

healthcare system distrust scale, designed to assess the belief that physicians would act in a patient's best interest to prevent a potentially negative important outcome (ref). This is a 10 item survey scored 1-5 where 1 = "strongly disagree" and 5 = "strongly agree" and higher scores generally indicate more distrust. Patient distrust was measured by asking if patients felt their Medical Record (MR) would be kept private or would be accessed without their permission.

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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