Diana D. Jeffery, PhD, on Mental Health Comorbidities: Predictors of Cost and Utilization
2017 Quality Care Symposium
Diana D. Jeffery, PhD, of the Defense Health Agency, discusses the need to screen for mental health comorbidities, including depression, anxiety, adjustment disorders, substance use disorders, and persistent mental illnesses, as shown in a study of breast and prostate cancer patients (Abstract 18).
Gwendolyn P. Quinn, PhD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses the challenges that minority, LGBTQ, low-literacy, and underserved populations face in getting their voices heard and what it will take to change that.
Nicole Mittmann, PhD, of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, discusses her study findings on transitioning breast cancer survivors to primary care and the savings in resources and dollars that accrued as a result (Abstract 1).
Caleb Dulaney, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses ways to broaden and improve the quality of information that women with breast cancer find—in English and Spanish—on websites of nationally recognized cancer centers (Abstract 135).
Brian Weiss, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, discusses a program designed to eliminate errors in chemotherapy use among pediatric patients whose regimens incorporate multiple drugs and rigorous monitoring schedules (Abstract 37).
Thomas J. Smith, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, summarizes two papers for which he was a discussant: reducing overuse of colony-stimulating factors without compromising the safety of patients with lung cancer receiving chemotherapy, and a cost-and-survival analysis before and after implementing Dana-Farber Clinical Pathways for patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (Abstracts 3, 52).