Navigating Future Public Health Emergencies With Pandemic Lessons on Ovarian Cancer

In the final part of The American Journal of Managed Care®'s interview with Chun Chao, PhD, MS, cancer epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, she suggests areas for further research into the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on ovarian cancer outcomes.

Chao also shares key lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic on how to maintain positive outcomes for insured patients with ovarian cancer during future public health emergencies.

Watch parts 1 and 2 to learn more about the key objectives, findings, and limitations of her study, "Clinical Remission Rates in Patients With Epithelial Ovarian Cancer Before and After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in an Integrated Healthcare Delivery System."

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What additional research is needed to better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ovarian cancer outcomes?

There are many other outcomes that should be examined to gain a comprehensive understanding of the potential impact of the pandemic on ovarian cancer outcomes. For example, we may want to know if patients with ovarian cancer diagnosed in the pandemic period have a more advanced stage at diagnosis. If there is a delay in people seeking care, then you may see a shift of the stage at diagnosis, and this can vary by health care settings and insurance status, like we discussed earlier.

We will also want to evaluate patient safety outcomes during the treatment phase, such as readmission rates after their primary surgery, emergency room visits, or any hospitalizations from disease-related complications during that treatment phase. Further, we will want to evaluate if the recurrence rates remain similar after people achieve remission.

In the longer term, I think looking at ovarian cancer-related mortality with a very carefully designed study will be of interest, as well. There are also other types of outcomes that will be of interest, in my opinion. Some of these are health services-type outcomes. I mentioned some of these earlier. For example, if the frequency of physician visits remains similar or decreases during treatment during the pandemic period. Also, if people are getting adequate monitoring for their treatment, for their disease, and if people are receiving adequate follow-up care after they complete the treatment.

When you see differences in patient clinical outcomes, these will help you understand the potential underlying reasons that may explain those differences.

What lessons can health care providers take from your study to help ensure positive outcomes for patients amid future public health emergencies?

From this study, our data may suggest that if you can maintain the necessary patient physician contact during your course of care, with the utilization of telehealth, that may really help maintain the outcomes for these patients. I think that means fully utilizing telehealth's potential, and then move all the care that can be delivered remotely to telehealth so patients have less burden to come in for the actually necessary in-person visits that they have to be there for.

I think that means that health systems will continue to build infrastructures for the telehealth capacity and continuously explore the potential use of these telehealth technologies during normal times so that we can be ready for, God forbid, another pandemic.

I think another point that is not directly addressed by our study is the quick deployment of safety protocols in the clinic and hospitals. When you have that, then patients will feel more comfortable, or they feel more confident with the safety measures. Then, they're more likely to come in for the really necessary in-person visits. It could be to get blood drawn, it could be their chemotherapy, but they need to feel safe when they come in. A quick appointment of those protocols, I believe, will be really helpful for our patients with cancer.