Abstract 4123
Background
“The South Thailand Insurgency” is burning violence in the deep south of Thailand. The insurgency which has been ongoing since 2004 has played out in the three southern most districts of the country Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat and some area of Songkhla, so-called the “Red Zone”. Violence such as daily ambush, bombing on soldiers and civilians, caused people living in terror. This violence has affected cancer service. Many cancer patients gave up on their lives due to struggle with the disease itself, security concerns, traveling and caregiving burden led to a high loss to follow-up rate. We, an oncology service team working at Songklanagarind hospital, the only one radiation and oncology center located in this area, in cooperation with doctors and nurses working in the Red Zone created a network and utilized an electronic consultation and referral system to alleviate these suffering. We preliminarily reported its real-life performance in 3 years period.
Methods
Electronic consultation system(E-consult) was a web-based program designed and developed to provide advice and facilitate the referral process in cancer care. Since October 2015, we prospectively surveyed the impact of this pilot project on the quality of service by counting waiting time, the number of center visit until treatment, unnecessary referral avoidance, patient and potential cost saving compared to the normal referral system.
Results
E-consult reached out to 7 hospitals and 589 patient referred through E-consult. Among patients from the Red Zone, without E-consult, their average waiting time was 56.4 days, the number of visits was 6.5 visits. The estimated financial burden was $758.8 per patient. After the implementation of E-consult in 259 patients, the average time to treatment was 41.5 days (p = 0.006) and the number of counter visit was 2.3 visits (p < 0.001). The estimated financial burden was $358.7(p < 0.001). We prevented 28 patients from the unnecessary referral.
Conclusions
In this special context, the electronic referral system not only was helpful to improve medical access, timeliness to specialist care, saving the patients’ family time and resources but it also supports the doctors and nurses on duty in the Red Zone.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
Nanthiya Rattanakhot.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
Resources from the same session
3349 - Interplay between miR-17-5p and MALAT-1 Shapes The Cytokine Storm in Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) Tumor Microenvironment
Presenter: Raghda Soliman
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
4014 - Clinical verification on the relationship between lipid metabolism and the immune microenvironment of breast cancer
Presenter: Wataru Goto
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
4158 - The clinical and transcriptional signatures of human CD204 reveal an applicable marker for tumor associated macrophage in breast cancer
Presenter: Yunjie He
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
5392 - Activated effector T cells co-expressing multiple inhibitory receptors (IRs) are enriched in the tumor immune microenvironment in high grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC)
Presenter: Alice Bergamini
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
2617 - Oncolytic reovirus as a new anti-tumor strategy in castration resistant prostate cancer
Presenter: Yunlim Kim
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
2995 - Dysregulation of helper T lymphocytes in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients is highly associated with aberrant production of miR-21
Presenter: Ali Memarian
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
3597 - Myeloid derived suppressor cells but not regulatory T cells are associated with adaptive immunity and clinical outcomes in anal squamous cell carcinoma
Presenter: Christophe Borg
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
3430 - Evaluation of immune responses among responders (R) and non-responders (non-R) in a humanized mouse model with colorectal cancer (CRC) xenografts treated with combination immunotherapy
Presenter: Juan Marín Jiménez
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
1995 - ¬¬Advanced melanoma patients with high CD16+ macrophages have better response and survival to anti-PD-1 based immunotherapy
Presenter: Hansol Lee
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract
3988 - Basal NK activity and early Treg function inhibition predicts Nivolumab responsiveness in metastatic renal cancer patients (REVOLUTION) trial.
Presenter: Sara Santagata
Session: Poster Display session 3
Resources:
Abstract