This month we will finish the discussion the common barriers to biomarker testing for cancer patients in the community. Lengthy complex reports is a relatively straightforward barrier to address, so I will pair it with the lack of education on guidelines barrier to complete this blog series on barriers to biomarker testing.
As you may recall, these are the top 10 barriers that I’ve seen to biomarker testing in the community:
- High cost of testing.
- Long turnaround time for results.
- Limited tissue quantity.
- Preanalytical issues with tissue.
- Low biomarker testing rates.
- Lack of standardization in biomarker testing.
- Siloed disciplines.
- Low reimbursement.
- Lengthy complex reports.
- Lack of education on guidelines.
Lengthy Complex Reports
Laboratory issued reports are typically developed by the lab and are often written in a manner that is easy to understand for other laboratorians. I’m guilty of writing long interpretive comments that are attached to every molecular diagnostics results. I would get irritated when the physician would call and ask questions that in my mind were clearly addressed in the interpretive comment. I thought the issue was they were not reading the comments (and this could be true). I now understand that the issue is that the comments were not written for the end-user.
When insourcing NGS I was fortunate enough to get feedback from the multidisciplinary team in the Molecular Steering Committee. One of the complaints that I heard loudly locally, that also resonated in the community, was the reports for NGS were way too long and they didn’t find value in half of the information that was in the report. When were shopping for the right cloud-based reporting software, I kept the feedback in mind from the oncologists. I was actually able to get proto-type reports from 3 different companies and provide them to the oncologists for them to score and provide feedback on the layout. This was invaluable in developing a report that worked well for the treating physician and not the laboratory.
Some of the feedback they gave that made a direct impact into the report we created was: bold the patient’s name so they can easily find it, use patterns as well as color-coding for drug resistance/sensitivity in case the document is faxed, and tell them everything they need to know to make treatment decisions on page one. These are things that were not intuitive to me. Having end-user feedback helped us generate a more useable report and enlightened me that the report needs to be written to an oncology audience.
Lack of education on guidelines
I’ve had the opportunity to do a great deal of educating around biomarker testing in the community. Physicians and nurses in the community want to provide guideline-driven care. Often when we are educating on changes to guidelines, it’s the first time the providers have heard of the change. NCCN for lung cancer alone had at least 7 updates in 2019. It’s amazing that the guidelines are able to keep up with the ever changing science and drug approvals; however it’s incredibly difficult to keep track of the changes.
In large institutions we are fortunate enough to have specialized physicians that help keep the rest of us informed of changes in their area of expertise. Community physicians typically see and treat all types of cancers and don’t always have the network of specialists to keep them informed of changes for every cancer type. Many of them also do not have the time to attend conferences due to heavy workload.
In order for the community physician to be informed of all of the changes to guidelines for every tumor type, we need to make sure the information is provided in a variety of methods. The information needs to be easily accessible. I have found that educational programs work well when brought to the community rather than trying to get the community to come to them. Pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies and even reference laboratories now have teams of individuals in roles that are intended to educate and not sell. They can provide in office education, facilitate webinars, lunch and learns, and dinner programs. If there is a champion for biomarker testing within the facility, you can develop your own educational program to be delivery locally at grand rounds. We discuss changes to guidelines within our Molecular Steering Committee. I’ve also talked to institutions where this education is given during tumor boards.
I don’t think there is a bad forum for education. Some physicians may prefer getting guideline updates from twitter; others will be more comfortable with a discussion with an expert, regardless of the medium it is important that we help facilitate education of guidelines in order to increase biomarker testing rates in the community.
-Tabetha Sundin, PhD, HCLD (ABB), MB (ASCP)CM, has over 10 years of laboratory experience in clinical molecular diagnostics including oncology, genetics, and infectious diseases. She is the Scientific Director of Molecular Diagnostics and Serology at Sentara Healthcare. Dr. Sundin holds appointments as Adjunct Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and Assistant Professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School and is involved with numerous efforts to support the molecular diagnostics field.
Lablogatory 