Following up on my brief April 2 post about the Comprehensive Cancer Care Improvement Act of 2009 (overview here), I now have had a chance to look at the proposed legislation introduced in the House of Representatives on April 1 by Lois Capps (D-CA) and Charles Boustany (R-LA). There are a number of important pieces of the legislation, but I’ll focus my comments on those that are most related to encouraging delivery information therapy (Ix) to Medicare beneficiaries with cancer.

The bill proposes that all Medicare beneficiaries with cancer be provided with “comprehensive cancer care services,” which is defined to include:

• Proactive delivery of the right information: “…details, to the greatest extent practicable, all aspects of the care to be provided to the individual, with respect to the treatment of such cancer, including any curative treatment and comprehensive symptom management (such as palliative care) involved…”
• Delivered in a documented form that the person can refer to when convenient for him or her: “…is furnished in written form…”
• Delivered at the right moment in care: “…as soon as practicable after the date on which the individual is so diagnosed…” and “…the revision of such plan of care as necessary to account for any substantial change in the condition of the individual…”
• Information tailored to individual needs: “…is furnished, to the greatest extent practicable, in a form that appropriately takes into account cultural and linguistic needs of the individual in order to make the plan accessible to the individual…”
• After-care summaries: Similar language for the “…individual who has completed the primary treatment for cancer…the development of a follow-up cancer care plan…”
• Standards for ensuring appropriate Ix: “…standards for determining the need and frequency for revisions of the plans of care and follow-up plans based on changes in the condition of the individual and standards for the communication of the plan to the patient…”

The bill calls for a demonstration project to test out payment methodologies for these comprehensive cancer care services and determine the impact of them on patient outcomes.

Hopefully, as the legislation gets discussed in committee, the language regarding “in written form” can be modified to allow for a variety of media for communicating care plans and needs. For example, for some people, graphics, audio, or video may provide more useful, understandable or actionable information.

In any case, this bill would be a great step forward giving people stricken with cancer access to high-quality, tailored information that can help them better manager their illness and their health.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 8:12 am and is filed under Cancer Care, Inside the Beltway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.