Medical record documentation of cancer patients after an integrated engagement plan.

Abstract

68 Background: Complete and accurate medical record (MR) documentation is essential to quality of cancer patient care, whose complex health and social needs should be addressed during medical consultation. We aimed to evaluate the MR compliance before and after an engagement plan (EP) and an education meeting (EM) for oncologists. Methods: An integrated EP was designed to improve medical notes in a Brazilian cancer center. Firstly, a pool of 160 selected MR of patients with prevalent neoplasms was reviewed to identify frequently missed components. Based on this result, a set of MR documentation standards was developed and presented in an EM for oncologists. To verify its effect, a cross-sectional analysis was performed using 25 standard elements collected from randomized MR before and after the EM such as pathology report, cancer stage, medical history, treatment plan, patient comprehension, and initial psychological assessment. It was given particular emphasis to psychological assessment during the EM as a low documentation of it was identified after the first MR review. The variation of the proportions pre- and post-EM was assessed using the chi-square test. Results: A total of 850 elements were collected from 34 patients’ MR two months pre-EM and 950 elements of 38 patients’ MR two weeks after. Of these patients, pre-EM 18 were under intravenous (IV) therapy and 16 under oral antineoplastic therapy and, post-EM, 14 and 24 patients were under IV and oral therapy, respectively. Pre-EM, MR compliance of patients under oral therapy was 68% and for patients under IV therapy 78% (P = 0.0013). Post-EM, the difference between MR compliance of patients under oral and IV therapy was 6% (82% vs. 88%, P = 0.0167). Overall MR compliance pre-EM was 73% and post-EM 84% (P < 0.0001). Psychological assessment pre- and post-EM were 9% and 50% (P = 0.0002), respectively. Conclusions: Patients under IV therapy have a more accurate MR documentation than patients under oral therapy. Overall compliance of MR documentation was significantly improved after an EM, a part of an integrated EP. Psychological assessment documentation has not only improved, but it is expected that more attention has been given to this valuation by oncologists.