Impact of a Breast cAncer Survivorship Interprofessional Community Care Model

In Singapore, breast cancer accounts for approximately 30% of all new cancer cases. With an overall 10-year age-standardized survival rate of 50%, it is estimated that 900 BCS will require dedicated cancer survivorship care in Singapore annually. However, the current oncologist-centric survivorship model adopted in Singapore will not be sustainable to respond to the rising demand for survivorship care services. This inability to cope with the growing demand poses a major challenge to the health system and accentuates an emerging need for an alternative evidence-based care model to support BCS and healthcare providers in achieving efficient and effective cancer survivorship care.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) advocates a collaborative survivorship care model involving the transition of cancer survivors from specialist to primary care setting via a risk-stratified approach. While the proposed collaborative model is promising and appealing, its feasibility and applicability in the local Asian setting considering cultural and socioeconomic factors is unknown. Furthermore, two major gaps exist: (i) there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation of structural factors in care coordination and clinical outcomes determination; and (ii) the potential of community pharmacists in cancer survivorship care is not maximized.

The main objective of the study is to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the BASIC care model for implementation amongst BCS and healthcare providers. The secondary objective addresses the effectiveness of BASIC model by providing robust parameters estimation for the physical symptom distress burden and quality of life outcome measures that will be used for sample size calculation in the eventual main trial.

This will be a pragmatic, randomized, controlled, pilot trial conducted at the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), participating SingHealth polyclinics and Watsons community pharmacies over a period of 2 years. Participants will be randomized into the multidisciplinary collaborative care arm or attentional control arm in a 1:1 ratio, stratified by the absence versus presence of comorbidities. In the multidisciplinary collaborative care arm, participants will experience a 12-month cancer follow-up schedule via a shared-care approach. In the attentional control arm, participants will continue with usual care.

Inclusion criteria

• 21 years old or older.
• Received a formal diagnosis of breast cancer.
• At least three years after active primary treatment including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy (if any) and targeted therapy (if any).
• Ascertained to be a low-risk cancer survivor by oncologist.
• Ambulatory with an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status of 0 to 2, indicative of adequate functioning capacity to travel and receive follow-up care at polyclinics.
• Able to read and understand either English or Mandarin

Exclusion criteria

• Physically or mentally incapable of providing verbal/ written consent.
• Unwell or unable to comply with the study protocol that involves questionnaires completion.