Background: Although information about quality care is increasingly available, there remains a gap in knowledge regarding stakeholders’ perceptions of quality cancer care. It is important to maintain high quality of patient care, but perspectives of quality may differ by stakeholder.
Objective: This systematic qualitative literature review was conducted to understand the current perceptions of key stakeholders about quality cancer care.
Methods: OVID/PubMed was searched using a predefined search strategy using specific medical subject headings (MeSH terms) encompassing each core concept: cancer, chemotherapy, and quality of health care. Additional articles were obtained from the selected article bibliographies and from online searches informed by content from the selected articles. Eligible articles were required to focus on adults with cancer receiving chemotherapy, and must have presented perspectives obtained directly from a key stakeholder (patient, managed care, payer, health care provider, or caregiver) published from 2009-present. Thematic and descriptive analyses were conducted to assess the intersection of quality care issues from each stakeholder perspective.
Results: The search strategy identified 542 articles that were reviewed for eligibility. Of these, 15 articles were eligible, reporting perspectives from 4933 respondents (representing perspectives of patients, providers, caregivers, and thought leaders). Cancer patient perspectives of quality care were primarily concerned with information needs (9 of 11 articles), psychosocial support and timeliness of care (each theme reported in 7 of 11 articles), responsibility for care (6 of 11 articles), and coordination of care (5 of 11 articles). Provider perspectives included information needs of patients, coordination of care, and psychosocial support needs (each theme reported in 3 of 4 articles), as well as the need to address equity in cancer care, reimbursement concerns, and the timeliness of care (each reported by 2 of 4 articles).
Conclusions: Thematic elements related to cancer quality were relatively consistent between patients and providers. The perspectives of these groups are important to consider as quality initiatives are being developed to ensure that provider and patient perspectives are reflected. Limitations of this work include the search strategy being limited to PubMed and work being limited to one reviewer. Despite these limitations, it is evident that the inclusion of perspectives of payers and managed care organizations are needed in the peer-reviewed medical literature.
