University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center Receives Funding to Implement Improved Symptom Monitoring for Patients Undergoing Cancer Treatment

CLEVELAND - Patients undergoing treatment for cancer often experience distressing symptoms such as fatigue, pain and nausea. Managing these symptoms, which can stem from both the disease and its treatment, is a key component of high-quality cancer care and can enhance patients’ well-being, decrease visits to the hospital and improve treatment adherence. New funding to University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center aims to support those goals.

UH Seidman Cancer Center has been approved for funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to implement electronic monitoring of patient’s self-reported symptoms during cancer treatment.

Led by Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, UH Chief Quality and Clinical Transformation Officer, and Veale Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Clinical transformation and  Melinda Hsu, MD, a medical oncologist at UH Seidman Cancer Center, this project aims to improve the quality of life and clinical outcomes for patients being treated for their cancer at UH Seidman Cancer Center by integrating electronic patient-reported outcome tools into EPIC, the electronic health record.  

“Anything we can do to lessen the suffering of patients going through cancer treatment is a worthy endeavor. Currently the project will include 10 locations, including UH Cleveland Medical Center, and it’s intended to reach more than 10,000 patients across Northeast Ohio,” said Dr. Pronovost.

This project will implement findings from a PCORI-funded patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness study demonstrating improved symptom control, physical function and health-related quality of life among patients who completed electronic patient-reported outcome surveys compared with those who received usual care.

“This award will allow us to design a sustainable and patient-centered method of electronically monitoring our patients’ symptoms, said Dr. Hsu. “Our multi-disciplinary team will aim to broadly implement this across multiple UH Seidman Cancer Center locations with the help of this award.”

University Hospitals is a participant in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII) and was selected for funding through a PCORI funding opportunity recruiting HSII participants to promote evidence-based practice based on findings generated from PCORI-funded patient-centered CER. HSII aims to reduce the estimated 17-year gap between evidence publication and clinical application. This initiative recognizes that health systems’ practical experience and real-world insights are crucial for sustainable, large-scale implementation of practice-changing findings in clinical care.

This funding award has been approved pending completion of PCORI’s business and programmatic review and issuance of a formal award contract.

PCORI is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions.