Across the course of their care, most cancer patients experience severe side effects, including fatigue, pain, and nausea. When these symptoms are not addressed in a timely way, these patients often end up in the emergency department.

Unfortunately, the ED is not the best place to manage cancer patients' symptoms and can lead to significant avoidable costs. Realizing this, CMS plans to hold providers accountable for ED visits and hospitalizations by patients receiving chemotherapy through the Outpatient Quality Reporting Program.

Use this research briefing to learn three best practices for cancer programs to reduce avoidable use of the ED and hospital:

• Identify the drivers of avoidable ED and hospital utilization
• Make it easy for patients to report their symptoms to their care team
• Dedicate resources to manage urgent symptoms in the cancer center

Download the Briefing

Related resources

Use these additional resources to support your efforts to improve urgent care and keep cancer patients out of the emergency department.

• Urgent Symptom Management A3 Tool: Use this tool, which we have adapted from the Lean approach, and an example from MidMichigan Health to evaluate how your program currently manages patients with urgent needs and develop a more effective solution.
• Cancer Patient Urgent Care Pro Forma: Use our pro forma tool to understand which model for providing urgent care support is right for your organization.
• Cancer Care Transformation Self-Assessments: Use this evaluation to better understand your cancer program's current performance, prioritize opportunities for improvement, and find related resources.
• Nebraska Medicine’s Urgent Symptom Phone Triage Process Map: See how Nebraska Medicine fields urgent symptom calls from cancer patients.

Check out these resources from the 24-Hour Cancer Clinic at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin Froedtert Hospital, which helped reduce cancer patients' ED utilization by 11%:

• 24-Hour Cancer Clinic Brochure
• 24-Hour Cancer Clinic Oncologist Badge Tag