Over 10,000 patients were effectively screened over four months without clinical staff involvement, freeing up time for staff to address those patients at high risk based on survey responses.

Electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) of pain and depression helped meet two critical standards under ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI).

Boston, MA, September 3, 2019 – ConcertAI, the leading Real-World Data and AI Enterprise Technology company for precision oncology, announced today that it will present research findings that demonstrate the effectiveness of utilizing an electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) system to help oncology practices meet ASCO Quality of Practice Initiative (QOPI®) standards on pain assessment and depression screening in cancer patients. The data will be presented during a rapid abstract session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2019 Quality Care Symposium being held September 6-7 in San Diego, California.

ASCO’s QOPI is a certification program established to evaluate oncology practice performance and two critical PRO standards are pain assessment and depression screening. However, many practices often lack the resources to incorporate these assessments into their workflow or to fulfill the necessary reporting requirements to demonstrate compliance to these standards.

For this study, researchers collected data from 10,449 patients as part of routine clinical care at a community oncology practice during a four-month period (Jan. 1 – April 26, 2019). Using the Patient Care Monitor™ (PCM), ConcertAI’s proprietary, cloud-based ePRO system that links PRO data to electronic medical record data in real-time, patients completed the PCM Core Symptom Survey as well as Patient Health Questionnaire-2 and 9 (PHQ2/PHQ9) to screen for pain and depression respectively via a handheld e-tablet.

“Patient reported outcomes have become an increasingly effective tool to assess the impact of treatment on patient quality of life and track side-effects of treatment so that providers can address them effectively,” said Joanne Buzaglo, Ph.D., Executive Director, PRO Solutions at ConcertAI and the research abstract’s primary author. “This research illustrates the unique ability to standardize approaches while leveraging patient data to improve treatment discussions at point of care as well as adherence to industry best practices.”

In particular, of the 10,449 patients that completed the PCM survey, fifteen percent (n=1584) met the pain threshold (scored seven or above on a 0-10 scale) that signaled an alert to the physician for further evaluation. With respect to depression, five percent (n=559) reported a PHQ2 threshold level that warranted further screening from PHQ9 questions. Of those, another 16% (n=92), or .01% of the total sample, met criteria for moderate to severe depression, triggering a real-time alert for further clinical evaluation in advance of the patient consultation.

“This study demonstrates that an ePRO system is an effective way to monitor for symptoms, enhance physician-patient communication during the appointment as well as provide an audit trail for QOPI metric reporting,” said Edward Stepanski, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer of ConcertAI’s Outcomes Science group. “The utilization of these tools not only helps demonstrate compliance to critical industry-driven standards of care, but further contributes to creating a culture of excellence at community oncology practices.”

“The effective and validated integration of ePRO into EMRs and deployment as standard-of-care can substantially help address patient needs, reduce practice burden and meet new requirements of standards and certification programs like QOPI,” said Jeff Elton, CEO of ConcertAI. “These advanced technologies and integrated data sources bring us new ways of understanding the patient experience, can inform new treatment approaches and serve as a critical foundational element for the next generation of value-based care models.”

Details of the presentation are below. The full abstract can be accessed on the ASCO 2019 Quality Care Symposium website.

Abstract Number and Title: #171, “Using an ePRO tool to help meet quality metrics in a clinical oncology practice.”
Session Information: Rapid Abstract Session A
Session Date and Time: Friday, September 6, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM