Radiotherapy and palliative care outpatient clinic: a new healthcare integrated model in Italy

Background On the basis of substantial evidence demonstrate that palliative care combined with standard care improves patient, caregiver, and society outcomes, we have developed a new healthcare model called radiotherapy and palliative care (RaP) outpatient clinic were a radiation oncologist and a palliative care physician make a joint evaluation of advanced cancer patients. Methods We performed a monocentric observational cohort study on advanced cancer patients referred for evaluation at the RaP outpatient clinic. Measures of quality of care were carried out. Results Between April 2016 and April 2018, 287 joint evaluations were performed and 260 patients were evaluated. The primary tumor was lung in 31.9% of cases. One hundred fifty (52.3%) evaluations resulted in an indication for palliative radiotherapy treatment. In 57.6% of cases was used a single dose fraction of radiotherapy (8 Gy). All the irradiated cohort completed the palliative radiotherapy treatment. An 8% of irradiated patients received the palliative radiotherapy treatment in the last 30 days of life. A total of 80% of RaP patients received palliative care assistance until the end of life. Conclusion At the first descriptive analysis, the radiotherapy and palliative care model seem to respond to the need of multidisciplinary approach in order to obtain an improvement on quality of care for advanced cancer patients.