Responding to distress in cancer care: Increasing access to psycho oncology services through integrated collaborative care.

Objective: Despite increased attention to the utility of collaborative care models for promoting whole‐person care in cancer populations, there is a paucity of empirical research testing the impact of these care models on effectively identifying and serving highly distressed cancer patients. This study sought to experimentally test the effectiveness of a year‐long collaborative care program on referral rates to psycho‐oncology services for patients with moderate to high distress. Methods: Data for this study consisted of 11,467 adult patients with cancer who were screened for psychosocial distress 6‐months prior to, and following, the integrated collaborative care intervention. Psychosocial referral rates pre‐, peri‐ and post‐ intervention were analyzed. Results: Findings indicated high distress patients were at 3.76 (95% CI [2.40, 5.87]), 5.03 (95% CI [3.25, 7.76]), and 7.62 (95% CI [5.34, 10.87]) times increased odds of being referred during the pre‐intervention, peri‐intervention, and post‐intervention, respectively, when compared to low distress patients, and these differences across time were significantly different (p = 0.04). Conclusion: Findings from this study suggest that the successful initiation of a collaborative care model within a comprehensive cancer center contributed to significantly greater referral rates of cancer patients with moderate to high distress to psycho‐oncology services. This study contributes to the growing consensus that collaborative care models can positively impact the care of complex medical patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]