The power of one: Evaluating the impact of a single multi-disciplinary treatment visit on time to treatment.
Sarah M C SittenfeldHalle C F MooreZachary GreenbergZahraa Al-HilliJame AbrahamStephen R GrobmyerEmily MonteleoneKatherine TullioChirag A ShahPublished in: The breast journal (2020)
Breast cancer treatment often requires multi-disciplinary evaluation, which can require multiple visits, delaying time to treatment initiation (TTI). The present analysis evaluated the impact of system-wide initiatives to reduce TTI by evaluating TTI for patients completing treatment evaluation in a single visit compared with those having multiple visits. The results demonstrated that patients who completed multi-disciplinary evaluation in a single visit had a reduced median TTI (27 vs 32 days, P = .002), which was seen for patients undergoing initial surgery (28.0 vs 33.5 days, P = .01) as well as for those undergoing neoadjuvant systemic therapy (22.5 vs 29 days, P = .05).