Building a Multidisciplinary Bridge Across the Quality Chasm in Thoracic Oncology

Lung cancer kills 160,000 patients annually; this represents 28% of all US cancer deaths. The overall year survival rate has only improved from 12% to 17% in 33 years. This failure reflects the innate lethality of lung cancer, but also reflects defects in patient care delivery. Care for the lung cancer patient starts with an abnormal radiologic scan, proceeds through a diagnostic biopsy, tests to determine the extent of spread of the disease (stage), selection of appropriate treatment, and finally ends with patient outcomes. At each step are multiple options and independent specialists, each one engaged by a process of sequential referrals in the serial care model. This process is often not user-friendly, is riddled with inefficiency, delays, and outcome variances. The coordinated multidisciplinary model, in which patients and their doctors collaborate to provide evidence-based care, is believed by experts to be superior, but has few examples of successful implementation. The implementation gap exists because of the paucity of good quality data, and lack of implementation know-how. Embedded in the highest US lung cancer mortality zone, the greater Memphis area has a racially, culturally, economically and geographically diverse population. The investigators research group has shown how poor quality care impairs patient survival in this region and in the greater US. The investigators have linked patient survival to compliance with multidisciplinary care plans. In this project, the investigators propose to rigorously test the impact of the multidisciplinary care model on patient outcomes in a community-based, private practice environment, similar to where 70% of lung cancer care is delivered in the US. The objective of this study is to provide high-level evidence of the impact of multidisciplinary care on lung cancer patient outcomes. Multidisciplinary care is defined as a model of care in which patients, their care-givers and key specialists concurrently and directly evaluate the same patients in the presence of the patients and their informal caregivers, in order to develop evidence-based consensus care plans