Implementation of a Health System Intervention to Improve Quality of Cancer Care for Rural Patients

Intervention: The investigators received letters of support from hospitals, and those who direct the cancer center staff have expressed their willingness to participate on behalf of their staff. This is a health-system-level intervention, designed as single-arm intervention trial, where five participating hospitals will be offered support in the areas of training and education, cancer data collection and reporting, quality improvement and clinical peer-to-peer support.

The ICAN intervention was developed through implementation science processes as an adaptation of the Markey Cancer Center Affiliate Network (MCCAN) with retention of identified core functions. Each hospital in the intervention arm has undergone interviews about their current cancer program needs and offerings. From the information gathered through these meetings, the investigators established baseline understandings of cancer centers and their services. Through these meetings, the investigators elicited program goals, challenges, and readiness for change within their cancer services. Prior to starting the ICAN intervention, the cancer centers will be provided a documentation specifying current status for meeting CoC accreditation standards, gaps identified, suggestions and resources for the next steps to meet goals, and progress toward fulfilling CoC accreditation standards. Through the intervention, each of the five hospitals will be offered support, expertise, and resources necessary to facilitate hospitals in achieving the standards set forth by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer. Support will be offered in the form of education and training regarding the standards and provision of cancer services, regular in-person and zoom check-ins with hospital stakeholders to evaluate progress, and provision of documentation and educational resources regarding standard requirements. The specific intervention actions will be tailored to the needs identified for each hospital or health system based on particular standards they currently do not meet and choose to work toward.

4 years from the start of the intervention, the investigators will use Iowa Cancer Registry data to evaluate the success of the intervention by comparing rates of compliance with pre- and post-intervention treatment-related quality measures in target and control hospitals using a difference-in-difference estimator. The rural hospitals in Iowa that serve the most rural cancer patients (all care for >100 newly diagnosed cancer patients per year) and have never been accredited by the CoC were chosen for intervention targets. The remainder of rural hospitals that care for >100 newly diagnosed cancer patients per year (n=4) were chosen as a comparison group. They were not contacted, as they will not be providing us with any data. Rather, the investigators will use data routinely collected by the Iowa Cancer Registry to compare aggregate compliance with quality measures for cancer care between the hospitals included in the intervention and hospitals that were not.

These variables needed to compute compliance with quality measures by hospital are routinely collected by the Iowa Cancer Registry from all hospitals in Iowa as part of routine public health surveillance. The investigators will only be using data provided to us by the Iowa Cancer Registry to calculate these measures for both intervention and control hospitals and will not be accessing medical record data from the intervention or control hospitals.

Interviews: Subjects from intervention hospitals will be asked to reply to the recruitment email and provide times over the subsequent two weeks that would for them to participate in a one-time audio/video-recorded telephone interview which will take approximately 30-45 minutes. Subjects will be asked prior to recording whether recording is permitted. If permitted, the interview will be recorded on zoom and converted to an audio file using UI (University of Iowa)-Capture. The recordings will be used to audio-transcribe the interview so that they transcript can be used in qualitative data-analysis. Only members of the research team will have access to the recordings. The audio-transcriptions will be done using the web-based service Rev.com. The recordings will be destroyed on completion of the data-analysis. The interview will include questions about the culture, structure, changes and current processes at their hospital for providing cancer care and the impact of the intervention. They will be mailed a $50 check in appreciation of their time after the interview has been conducted. There will be no additional follow-up to the interviews.