Meeting Standard 3.3

As you know, the new standard for survivorship went into effect January 1, 2015. Here we are 18 months later and I hear a lot of discussion and concern about how cancer programs will be evaluated on Standard 3.3 that mandates survivorship care plan delivery. Some of the comments I’ve received and read from cancer centers who have been surveyed suggest that surveyors are primarily interested in the process you’ve developed rather than your actual numbers and percentages of care plan delivery. One responder explained their process for meeting this standard with patients who did not keep their survivorship appointment and had no plan to attend a future appointment. Documents were mailed to the patient, the patient was called, and the documents were reviewed by the nurse over the phone. From my viewpoint, this process felt like an extraordinary effort to meet the standard in a meaningful way for the significant population of patients that have no desire to come to a survivorship appointment. However, the surveyor said this was not adequate to meet the standard. Another commenter said the surveyor thought the Journey Forward care plan was too long and not specific enough with regard to chemotherapy doses. I believe there’s still a lot of confusion about the standard and how to implement it. As more programs are surveyed, the ACoS will be better informed about the real world issues involved in meeting this standard. Hopefully, this will translate into a revised 3.3 that clarifies these issues without compromising the care and information we provide to our patients. Look for revisions in 2017.