Report Shows Time Efficiency Lacking in Ambulatory Appointments for Cancer Care

For patients with cancer, even brief visits to an ambulatory care center could take a substantial amount of time out of the patient’s and their care partner’s day. Study findings were reported in the journal The Oncologist.

“Accounting for travel time, there are no quick ‘10-minute’ trips to clinic, and even the simplest clinic encounters can take up hours of patients’ time,” the researchers wrote in their report.

A 20-minute clinician visit, for example, can represent a time burden of 2.5 hours. Care partners who accompany the patient to appointments experience the same time loss. 

In this retrospective, single-center analysis, the researchers aimed to quantify the time patients spent on oncology-related ambulatory care appointments. The researchers analyzed time spent on services that included laboratory visits, imaging, procedures, infusions, and visits with a clinician. They measured time involved in these activities over the course of a week and included time spent in the clinic, in addition to time spent on associated travel and parking. Home-to-home time involved in receiving ambulatory cancer care was the primary outcome of the study.

This analysis included 435 patients, with a median age of 64 years (IQR, 53-72 years). Among the most common primary cancer sites represented, 20.5% of the patients had breast cancer, 18.4% had hematologic cancer, and 17.7% had genitourinary/reproductive cancer. 

On a given day, patients had a median clinic time of 119 minutes (IQR, 78-202 minutes). With a median round-trip driving distance of 34 miles (IQR, 17-49 miles), patients also had an estimated median travel time of 50 minutes (IQR, 36-68 minutes) and a median estimated time spent on parking of 14 minutes (IQR, 12-15 minutes). Adding up clinic time, travel time, and parking time, the median total time was 197 minutes (IQR, 143-287 minutes).

The researchers also evaluated time spent according to type of service received. For patients undergoing laboratory-only visits, the median total time per visit was 99 minutes (IQR, 92-129 minutes). For clinician-only visits, the median total time was 144 minutes (IQR, 117-204 minutes). For visits involving a combination of laboratory, clinician, and infusion services, the median total time was 278 minutes (IQR, 244-354 minutes).

“The results of this study are an urgent call for the oncology community and health systems to recognize, acknowledge, and improve the time burdens that a single trip to a clinic can impose on patients and care partners,” the researchers wrote in their report.

Disclosures: Some authors declared affiliations with biotech, pharmaceutical, and/or device companies. Please see the original reference for a full list of disclosures.