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PURPOSE: Health care contact days—days spent receiving health care outside the home—represent an intuitive, practical, and person-centered measure of time consumed by health care. METHODS: We linked 2019 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and traditional Medicare claims data for community-dwelling older adults with a history of cancer. We identified contact days (ie, spent in a hospital, emergency department, skilled nursing facility, or inpatient hospice or receiving ambulatory care including an office visit, procedure, treatment, imaging, or test) and described patterns of total and ambulatory contact days. Using weighted Poisson regression models, we identified factors associated with contact days. RESULTS: We included 1,168 older adults representing 4.51 million cancer survivors (median age, 76.4 years, 52.8% women). The median (IQR) time from cancer diagnosis was 65 (27-126) months. In 2019, these adults had mean (standard deviation) total contact days of 28.4 (27.6) and ambulatory contact days of 24.2 (23.6). These included days for tests (8.0 [8.8]), imaging (3.6 [4.1]), visits with any clinicians (12.4 [11.5]), and visits with primary care clinicians (4.4 [4.7]), and nononcology specialists (7.1 [9.4]) specifically. Sixty-four percent of days with a nonvisit ambulatory service (eg, a test) were not on the same day as a clinician visit. Factors associated with more total contact days included younger age, lower income, more chronic conditions, poor self-rated health, and tendency to "go to doctor as soon as feel bad." CONCLUSION: Older adult cancer survivors spent nearly 1 month of the year receiving health care outside the home. This care was largely ambulatory, often delivered by nononcologists, and varied by factors beyond clinical characteristics. These results highlight the need to recognize patient burdens and improve survivorship care delivery, including through care coordination. Older cancer survivors spend nearly 30 days of a calendar year receiving health care outside their home! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

235 Background: Individuals with cancer face substantial demands on their energy and time due to the complexity of cancer care. We sought to describe frustrations with time-consuming aspects of cancer care among individuals with advanced ovarian or breast cancer. We hypothesized that frustrations would be highest for time spent on administrative tasks, particularly for those who are younger, employed, and have dependents. Methods: We analyzed baseline survey data from an ongoing prospective study of the time burdens of cancer care among individuals receiving treatment for ovarian or metastatic breast cancer at the University of Minnesota and University of Alabama-Birmingham. The survey included questions about frustrations with the time needed for cancer-related activities such as travel time, finding transportation, care coordination, receiving treatment, and paperwork (0=Not at all, 10=Extremely frustrated). We summarized the data using descriptive statistics and made comparisons across demographic and clinical characteristics using Wilcoxon rank-sum and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: A total of 67 participants completed the baseline survey, 37 (55.2%) with metastatic breast cancer and 30 (44.8%) with ovarian cancer. About 1/4 of participants (26.9%) were under 50 years old, 34.3% had dependents, 39.1% were employed, and 57.6% lived 30+ miles from the cancer clinic; 73.1% were non-Hispanic (NH) White and 22.4% NH Black; 4.5% reported another race/ethnicity. Over half (58.2%) agreed minimizing time spent on cancer-related activities was important to them; those employed were significantly more likely to agree (76.0% vs. 48.7%, p=0.03). Activities with the highest reported frustrations were the number of trips, time for care-related travel or paperwork, and wait time. Younger participants reported higher frustration with wait time (p=0.04) and time at the infusion center than older participants (p=0.03). Employed participants reported significant frustration with having to take time off work (p<0.0001), and those with dependents reported frustration needing to organize dependent care (p=0.01). Participants living 30+ miles from the cancer clinic reported greater frustrations with travel time (p=0.01), time needed for care coordination (p=0.01) and waiting for the provider (p=0.02). Some (10.6%) participants reported lacking reliable transportation and, among those, reported high frustration with the time needed for numerous activities, including finding transportation, paperwork, care coordination, and making appointments (all p<0.05). Conclusions: Cancer-related time demands are frustrating for many patients. Those employed, younger, with dependents, living further from the cancer clinic, and without reliable transportation experience greatest frustrations about time lost, underscoring the need to address these often unrecognized aspects of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

209 Background: As the oncology community increasingly acknowledges the time burdens of cancer care, there is a critical need for foundational work to understand the sources, populations impacted, and consequences of time toxicity. We sought to evaluate these through qualitative interviews. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with adults with advanced stage gastrointestinal cancer, informal care partners, and clinicians at an NCI-designated cancer center in MN, USA from Feb-Oct 2023. We explored aspects of cancer care that took up time and were perceived as burdensome, identified those most impacted, and the consequences. We recorded and transcribed interviews, and conducted inductive thematic analysis. Results: We interviewed 47 participants [16 patients (8 <60 years; 12 women), 15 care partners (10 <60 years; 9 women), and 16 clinicians (including advanced practice providers, nurses, physicians, schedulers, and social workers; 11 women)]. We identified 22 subthemes that we grouped into 5 themes (Table). Conclusions: This multi-stakeholder qualitative analysis provides a deeper understanding of time toxicity. These data will help the oncology community to map, measure, and ultimately address time toxicity. Theme Subthemes Illustrative quotes Source: Healthcare outside the home Travel, parking, and, waiting time, planned appointments, unplanned care, hospitalizations and facility-based care ''My wife and I made over 100 drives in two years, over an hour and a half in each direction." (Patient) Source: Often invisible tasks performed at home Logistic and administrative tasks, learning about the disease and treatment, medical management, time spent managing symptoms and on recovery, home-based care ''A large burden was like the insurance paperwork." (Care partner) ''And that has happened before where I've just spent the whole day at home waiting for home care." (Patient) Populations impacted: Care partners alongside patients Care partners are equally affected, taking over social responsibilities/ tasks of daily living ''Anything that takes time for me, is almost an equal burden on her. If not more sometimes." (Patient) Consequences Care becomes all-consuming, short visits turn into ''all-day" affairs, missing important life events/work, emotional distress, demoralization, financial burdens '' It's like I am always on a leash. I really don't have any control." (Patient) ''Even for a 30-minute infusion, you'll be there, like half a day or a whole day." (Patient) Positive interactions and hope for change Not all time spent is perceived as burdensome, clinicians are hopeful of decreasing time burdens, clinicians recognize their own time burdens as a barrier to addressing patients' ''Patients having to walk through this incredibly long, circuitous way to check in, do labs as ritual—we are disdainful of a patient's time. We should demand change." (Clinician) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]