The Supportive Oncology Collaborative: Using Collaborative Care to Increase Access to Community-Based Supportive Oncology (SA310)

Outcomes 1. Discuss a novel model for providing integrated supportive oncology services in community settings 2. Demonstrate benefits of providing integrated supportive oncology services using patient case examples 3. Describe process and outcome metrics associated with implementing community-based psychosocial and palliative care services There is an unmet need for palliative care and psychosocial oncology in community settings and a limited workforce to provide these services. When faced with a similar challenge, the field of psychiatry developed a model called collaborative care to increase access to psychiatry in primary care and other settings. Collaborative care uses a mix of onsite behavioral health workers and offsite psychiatrists to provide evidence-based behavioral healthcare in community settings. There is an extensive literature demonstrating improved outcomes associated with collaborative care. At Dana-Farber, we have well-established palliative care and psychosocial services, but, historically, they were not easily available to patients in the community satellites. To bridge this gap, we developed an integrated model of psychosocial oncology and palliative care services called the Supportive Oncology Collaborative (SOC). Based on the collaborative care model, this program integrates onsite and virtual resources to create a cohesive team composed of palliative care clinicians, a psychiatrist, and social workers. We do not offer discrete palliative care, social work, or psychiatric services in the SOC but rather provide a comprehensive team approach for each clinical concern. This model is currently implemented in the Dana-Farber satellite location in Merrimack Valley, which serves a diverse general oncology adult population. There are plans to expand to 4 additional locations over the next 2 years. In this session, we will present information about collaborative care and how it was adapted into the SOC. We will provide case studies of treatment by the SOC to demonstrate the team-based approach and how it differs from standard clinical care. We will share information about the structure and function of the SOC and lessons learned from implementation, and finally we will share process and outcome metrics associated with the intervention.