Lay Health Worker Expanded Intervention in Community Oncology Practices

Lay Health Worker Expanded Intervention in Community Oncology Practices

Undertreated patient symptoms and resulting acute care use require approaches that improve symptom-burden. Previously a lay health worker (LHW)-led symptom screening intervention was developed for patients with cancer. In pilot work, the intervention was associated with improvements in patient symptom burden and reductions in healthcare use and costs of care at the end of life. This intervention will be expanded across several clinics to evaluate the impact of the LHW intervention on with cancer and the LHW will be trained to refer patients to palliative care. This randomized intervention will evaluate the effect on healthcare use, total costs, palliative care and hospice referral.

All patients with newly diagnosed cancer, over the age of 75 will be randomized into the CareMore Pilot 2 Program with 200 randomized to the intervention grou and 200 randomized to the control group.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Newly diagnosed or relapsed cancer diagnosis.
• 75 years or older
• Diagnosis of relapse or progressive disease (any cancer diagnosis) as identified by imaging or biopsy and confirmed by physician.
• Must have capacity to verbally consent

Exclusion Criteria:

• Inability to consent to the study due to lack of capacity as documented by the referring physician.