1721P - Self-assessment tool and best-practice sharing to support hospitals in improving the quality of multi-disciplinary teams in lung cancer care

Background

Regular meetings of multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) constitute a key moment in the care pathway in lung cancer, where physicians discuss patient cases and decide on treatment plans. MDTs increase the volume of patients treated, improve diagnosis, and positively impact survival. However, the way MDTs are organized is variable across hospitals and countries. These variations may lead to sub-optimal outcomes, reflected by inconsistencies on the numbers of patients treated with curative intent and variable 5-year survival rates. The importance of MDTs keeps increasing, as the therapeutical landscape becomes more complex and evolves towards personalization.

Methods

Here we share a self-developed MDT maturity model and support hospitals to self-assess the performance of their MDTs in six dimensions: access to the MDT, processes, technology, quality, culture and capabilities. Once performance is self-assessed, gaps in hospitals’ current MDT practices are identified. The maturity model is accompanied by 40+ best practices covering each of the six key dimensions. This way identified gaps are matched to actionable best practices which can be implemented by hospitals.

Results

We have supported various hospitals to identify gaps in their current MDTs by leveraging this MDT maturity model and have used our identified best practices to address those gaps. Hospitals across Europe and Canada have this way been able to improve their MDTs along the model’s six identified dimensions in a measurable way. This process has been led by a network of 20 hospitals where the 40+ best practices were identified and is resulting in improved MDTs across other hospitals in Europe and Canada.

Conclusions

As MDTs become a standard part of patient care, inter-hospital collaboration should become standard to provide a platform for improvement. This work shows that self-assessment tools, best-practice sharing, support from leading hospitals, and change management can help hospitals improve the way their MDTs are organized and managed, which ultimately benefits patients’ lives. Optimization of MDTs should be a key part of a continuous improvement cycle for every hospital, and this work ultimately facilitates this process.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

AstraZeneca & Vintura.

Funding

AstraZeneca.

Disclosure

E. Nadal: Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck Sharp Dohme, Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Merck, Daiichi Sankyo, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Amgen, Sanofi, Qiagen, Janssen; Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck Sharp Dohme, Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly, Pfizer, Sanofi, AstraZeneca, Takeda, Amgen, Qiagen, Janssen; Financial Interests, Personal and Institutional, Funding, Clinical trial funded by Roche: Roche; Financial Interests, Personal and Institutional, Funding, BMS funded a clinical trial: Bristol Myers Squibb; Financial Interests, Personal and Institutional, Funding, Merck funded a clinical trial: Merck; Non-Financial Interests, Advisory Role: Pfizer, Roche. M. Gallego Llorente, Y.P. Cui, L. Verbaas: Financial Interests, Institutional, Speaker, Consultant, Advisor: AstraZeneca. A. Moucquot, H. Moses: Financial Interests, Personal and Institutional, Full or part-time Employment: AstraZeneca. T. Finazzi: Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Travel grants: AstraZeneca, Debiopharm, Astellas; Financial Interests, Institutional, Advisory Board: MSD. T.O. Halvorsen: Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Honoraria: Pierre Fabre, MSD, Pfizer, Takeda, AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Personal, Speaker, Consultant, Advisor: Sanofi; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Funding: Roche, AstraZeneca, MSD; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Travel: AstraZeneca, MSD. I. Opitz: Financial Interests, Personal, Invited Speaker: Roche, AstraZeneca; Financial Interests, Personal, Advisory Board: AstraZeneca, MSD, BMS; Financial Interests, Personal, Other, Proctorship: Intuitive; Financial Interests, Institutional, Research Grant: Medtronic, Roche. D. Dellamonica: Financial Interests, Personal and Institutional, Full or part-time Employment: AstraZeneca. B. Amesz: Financial Interests, Institutional, Speaker, Consultant, Advisor: AstraZeneca.