Patient Planning Services
Empowering Caregivers and Families with Holistic and Accessible Distress Screening

Family members and friends often become informal caregivers for long-term patients. While this is a wonderful gift, the demanding nature of being a primary caregiver can be isolating and lead to mental health issues. If one looks at the current landscape, there are various tools designed to assess and support a patient's mental health needs, but caregivers, both informal and professional, remain underserved.

Numerous studies highlight the prevalence of depression among informal caregivers, with an estimated 40 to 70 percent displaying clinical symptoms and 20 percent expected to experience them by the end of 2023.

Patient Planning Services (PPS), along with the Cancer Support Community Research and Training Institute, has developed a tool to address the gap.

A technology arm of the Cancer Support Community (CSC), PPS addresses the mental health needs of caregivers through a digital assessment tool designed to evaluate the care requirements of professional and informal caregivers assisting long-term patients with cancer. This solution is essentially a caregiver-facing version of its novel Cancer Support Source®, a validated screener that identifies relevant patient support needs and creates a comprehensive resource and referral plan tailored to their needs.

The new tool delivers assessments on an easy-to-use platform that reviews a caregiver's concerns about their coping and mental health as well as that of their loved one who has cancer. Once the initial assessment is complete, the solution generates a custom resource report based on the caregiver's responses.

For example, if the caregiver expresses concern about finances, the tool will generate insurance and financial support resources. Alternatively, if the caregiver expresses sadness and loneliness, the tool can refer them to the social work team or a local support group. The customized real-time resource report generated for the caregiver as well as an automated referral process to specialists within the health system or a department or specialty level sets PPS' platform apart from most mental health assessment tools and makes it scalable for a wide variety of healthcare organizations with differing staffing and assets. Above all, the platform ensures caregivers receive the support they need in a timely and efficient manner, improving their mental health and overall well-being. The same is true for the patient version of the tool and the recently culturally validated Spanish patient version.

"Our platform can integrate with any electronic medical record system, making it flexible and adaptable to different healthcare settings, or work as a stand-alone platform. In addition, the rollout process is quick and straightforward, decreasing burden for caregivers, patients, and providers and replacing traditional paper-based approaches with an automated and efficient process," says Cate O'Reilly, Vice President of PPS.

PPS demonstrates its success through numerous successful collaborations. A case example is a hospital system with multiple physical sites spread across a large geographic area. Previously, each care facility in this network conducted disparate and diverse screening processes, leading to difficulties in accumulating and analyzing data. PPS connected to streamline their distress screening process using a digital solution that could also refer to and automate resources.

Flipping this script, PPS' platform helped the healthcare network collect and analyze raw and aggregate data across multiple hospital sites while providing a system-wide, granular view. This analysis involved categorizing the data based on tumor type or demographic, enabling the identification of trends, gaps, and needs for targeted interventions to improve patient outcomes across the health system.

One of PPS' key strengths is its ability to mitigate cost while helping patients pinpoint their unique requirements and potential risks. Research indicates that cancer patients with depression may require up to $100,000 more in care costs annually than those without a depression diagnosis. Depressed cancer patients are at a higher risk of committing suicide compared to their non-cancer counterparts, highlighting the importance of early intervention. Depressed patients also show higher utilization of emergency services and longer hospitalization days, which all drive up the cost of care. PPS assists healthcare providers in formulating timely and targeted responses by sending real-time high-risk alerts and comprehensive distress, depression, and anxiety screenings. The return on investment (ROI) comes with the efficiency and automation of a distress screening program.

In a recent study to demonstrate the value of healthcare utilization, a small retrospective cohort study of 148 breast cancer patients published in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology Research and Practice assessed the impact of PPS’ Cancer Support Source® distress screening program on healthcare utilization and cost. The patients who completed Cancer Support Source® screening and used Cancer Support Community follow-up supportive care services had 50 percent fewer emergency department visits. In addition, rates of integrative medicine visits were significantly higher among all patients who completed CSS screening (with or without follow-up support services) compared with patients who did not complete the screening.

Our platform can integrate with any electronic medical record system, making it flexible and adaptable to different healthcare settings, or work as a stand-alone platform. In addition, the rollout process is quick and straightforward, decreasing burden for caregivers, patients, and providers and replacing traditional paper-based approaches with an automated and efficient process

As part of the Cancer Support Community, one of the largest non-profit employers of licensed oncology mental health professionals in the U.S., PPS plans to expand its footprint into the pediatric care space with a new product, Checking IN. This web-based pediatric distress screener is an excellent tool for patients between the ages of 8 and 21 with chronic medical conditions. Using Checking IN, parents and healthcare providers can obtain a comprehensive overview of a patient's distress levels and gain a more accurate understanding of their overall well-being. Since its launch, the product has helped many providers augment their treatment courses based on datadriven insights into a patient's mental well-being, and 56 percent of providers changed their treatment based on results from Checking IN.

The PPS team recognizes the significance of supporting patients and caregivers as they navigate cancer, and the platform enables timely resource allocation and patient triage. Through its scientifically validated distress screening and evidence-based assessment tools, it continues to bridge gaps in mental health insight and enhance caregiver and patient accessibility to relevant resources proven to improve overall emotional and mental states.