Survivorship Care Plans

BY LACEY MEYER | MAY 29, 2009

Since the article "Mapping the Journey" was published in the Winter 2008 issue of CURE, more survivor care plans and tools have become available.

The University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center's OncoLink (www.oncolink.org) and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (www.livestrong.org) collaborated on a new computerized care plan, the LIVESTRONG Care Plan Powered by Penn Medicine's OncoLink (www.livestrongcareplan.org), just released in mid-May. The new plan is based on OncoLink's original OncoLife Survivorship Care Plan, which had been available since 2007.

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship has also collaborated with the UCLA Cancer Survivorship Center, WellPoint, Inc., and Genentech to develop Journey Forward (www.JourneyForward.org), which promotes physician and patient understanding of the post-treatment effects of cancer. Journey Forward launched in five pilot states in February with survivorship care plans for colon and breast cancer survivors and will later include plans for survivors of other cancer types throughout the country. The website includes a custom-made "Survivorship Care Plan Builder" for use by oncologists and an electronic "Medical History Builder" for patients.

At the recent AACR annual meeting Penn researchers reported that 97 percent of people who used the OncoLife tool rated their experience with it as "good" to "excellent," and 84 percent said they planned to share their plan with their health care team. Penn researchers surveyed more than 3,000 people who created OncoLife care plans during an 18-month period between 2007 and 2008; 62 percent of OncoLife users were cancer survivors and only 13 percent said they had received survivorship information in the past.

Poll: Have you received survivorship information from your doctor in the past? Click Here to take poll

Here are some other interesting articles about cancer survivorship care plans:

You've Survived Cancer, Now What?

Penn's Online Survivorship Care Plans Empower Cancer Survivors, Caregivers

Oncology Times article