Providing Cancer Care Closer to Home for Patients With Multiple Myeloma

There is very limited data on the utilization of National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCI-CCC) satellite sites in general. Of what is available, most is in regards to providing chemotherapy at facilities closer to patients' home. These "satellite chemotherapy infusion centers", typically community-based treatment locations at community hospitals/facilities, freestanding clinics, or mobile units, are reported to be well liked by patients who utilize their services and reduce their travel times and expenses. In these studies patients still remained in the care of their current provider and site and are required to travel to the site for clinical visits and other appointments. It is currently unknown if patients are willing to transfer their care to a different provider to alleviate travel burden. In addition, although increased travel burden has been lower quality of life in cross-sectional studies, no data exists suggesting that these reducing travel burden can improve these outcomes intra-patient, to the knowledge of the investigators.

The patient roles of the multiple myeloma clinical providers at the Siteman primary location have grown in recent years. The providers have determined a need to refer some patients to the satellite sites to relieve congestion at the site while also hopefully improving the clinical experience for those patients. This study is a natural experiment of this process.