Post-Treatment Follow-up Care for Survivors of Lung and Colorectal Cancer through Telehealth Self-Management Skills Building

Purpose

More than 16 million Americans, most over age 65, are living with a history of cancer. In addition to quality of life needs, survivorship care challenges are compounded by the growing complexity in care coordination and communication between oncology and other medical specialties. The COVID-19 pandemic has also exposed barriers and challenges to the delivery of cancer care, including survivorship care. Cancer centers and oncology practices transitioned many parts of care to telehealth. In this Cyber Discussion we share experiences on the design and delivery of telehealth self-management skills building to empower and enable survivors during post-treatment follow-up care. With a focus on lung and colorectal cancer, we share some early descriptive data on telehealth use for survivorship self-management care and discuss the potential of telehealth post-treatment follow-up care beyond COVID-19 pandemic.

For background on cancer survivorship care during COVID-19, please see the following two articles:

• “Soup cans, brooms, and Zoom:” Rapid conversion of a cancer survivorship program to telehealth during COVID-19
• Re-Addressing the Needs of Cancer Survivors during COVID-19: A Path Forward