Telehealth to improve access to cancer survivorship care

The population of people living with cancer who need and desire survivorship care is growing with Australia’s ageing population, improved screening, more effective anticancer therapies and increasing consumer expectations. The delivery of cancer survivorship care, particularly to those who live in rural and remote areas, can be facilitated by technological solutions such as telehealth. Telehealth, the delivery of services using information and communication technologies, offers benefits to cancer survivorship care. These can include the facilitation of communication, coordination and continuity of care, the overcoming of geographical barriers and enablement of underserved populations to access care. Indeed, a growing body of literature in the area of consumer experiences with telehealth suggests that care management away from the hospital environment can minimise disruption to consumers’ lives, enhance independence and provide consistency and continuity of contact. Despite these benefits, the capacity of the cancer nursing workforce, who have an integral role in survivorship care, to deliver this care using telehealth is not well understood. A national study was conducted to investigate cancer nurse preparedness and use of telehealth to deliver survivorship care. Despite high acceptance and positive attitudes towards telehealth, actual use of telehealth by cancer nurses was low. The results of this study reflect the need to understand the barriers and facilitators to cancer nurses’ use of telehealth in survivorship care and to understand implementation requirements of telehealth-facilitated models of cancer survivorship care. Without this knowledge, opportunities to improve access for people living with cancer to survivorship care may be missed.