Survivorship care plans: necessary but not sufficient?

T he Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) report From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition (Hewitt, Greenfield, & Stovall, 2006) was a seminal event for survivorship care, drawing attention to the myriad issues survivors face once treatment ends. The report included 10 recommendations, and one of them focused on survivorship care plans (SCPs), which include a treatment summary and follow-up care plan (IOM, 2005). This was a consensus-based recommendation to facilitate coordination of cancer care between specialists and primary care providers, an essential component of survivorship care (IOM, 2005). Since then, the implementation of this recommendation has been sporadic at best, being adopted by some practices and providers for some patients some of the time (Birken, Mayer, & Weiner, 2013; Forsythe et al., 2013). Reasons for poor adoption have included the length of time it takes to complete SCPs, lack of systems to make the process easier, and lack of reimbursement. When the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer released their new standards in 2012, they called for the implementation of SCP in accredited programs by 2015. Specifically, standard 3.3 listed the following requirement: • An SCP is prepared by the principal provider(s) who coordinated the oncology treatment for the patient with input from the patient’s other care providers. • The SCP is given to the patient on completion of treatment. • The written or electronic SCP contains a record of care received, important disease characteristics, and a follow-up