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The IOM Committee on Cancer Survivorship: Improving Care and Quality of Life concluded in their 2006 report "From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition" that cancer survivorship is a distinct phase of the cancer trajectory and that a strategy is needed for the ongoing clinical care of cancer survivors. As a follow-up to the report, the National Cancer Policy Forum of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) held a workshop, "Implementing Cancer Survivorship Care Planning" May 15-16 in Washington DC. The IOM report recommended that patients completing their primary treatment for cancer, as well as their primary care providers, be given a summary of their treatment and a comprehensive plan for follow-up. Such a plan would inform patients (and their providers) of the long-term effects of cancer and its treatment, identify psychosocial support resources in their communities, and provide guidance on follow-up care, prevention, and health maintenance. The IOM workshop was held to further inform the forum on the next steps to implementing cancer survivorship care planning.
Workshop topics included discussions on formats for templates for treatment summaries and care plans; implementation issues such as reimbursement; and potential practice sites for pilot tests of survivorship care planning. The workshop summary features presentations and commentary from cancer survivors, nurses, primary care physicians, oncology specialty physicians, health services researchers, and representatives of health insurance companies and managed care organizations; in addition to qualitative research reports from interviews with oncologists, primary care providers, nurses, and cancer survivors; and five commissioned background papers.
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