With the shift of traditional cancer care from the hospital to home, Alfred Cancer have implemented innovative services to meet service demands in the ambulatory space. In 2021, Alfred Cancer embarked on a Cancer@Home model of care, with the objective of developing capabilities and care pathways to enable the provision of timely quality care. The aim is to improve patient experience and care for patients beyond the walls of the hospital. Cancer@Home focuses not only on delivering cancer treatments in the home but also ensuring appropriate resources are available in the ambulatory same-day setting. The intention is to provide preventative outpatient interventions, to avoid acute deterioration requiring hospitalisation. This model had the hypothesis of reducing all hospital admissions by providing cancer treatments in the home and early interventions in the outpatient/community setting.
Initiatives introduced:
- Cancer HITH - immunotherapies/chemotherapies
- SURC
- PATS
- Allied Health (AH) outpatient resources
- Multiday AH resources
- Tumour Stream Coordinators
Key Results:
- 1100 treatments delivered in the home FY21/22 & 22/23
- Decline in ED presentations by 11% since the introduction of all initiatives
- Costs saved through reduced length of stay since the introduction of PATS ($388,411 saved over 12 months)
- Outpatient AH: 58% of patients experienced a halt in their weight loss or gained weight after receiving outpatient dietitian input; 600% increase in the number of individual patients supported by Speech Pathology
- Inpatient AH: 21% reduction in length of stay for those patients receiving AH intervention as an inpatient. 1.96 bed days per patient. Financial impact analysis demonstrates this is equivalent to 1482 bed days equating to 4 beds saved per annum and $1.18million in potential additional NWAU revenue as a bed substitution (@ 50% marginal rate)
- 5.5EFT dedicated tumour stream coordinators on boarded which has significantly enhanced the patient experience and reduced hospital presentations