Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement - Breast Cancer Survivorship

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Canadian women, with over 30 000 individuals diagnosed every year. While treatments including surgery and/or radiation are important for local treatment, most patients will receive additional systemic therapies (eg. chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, immunotherapy, and/or targeted therapy) to improve breast cancer outcomes. These therapies have diverse side effect profiles, requiring regular follow up with a health care provider. Historically, these assessments have been conducted in person, however since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, patient assessments are increasingly being done virtually. There is limited data on the use of virtual care in patients with breast cancer who are receiving systemic therapy, and deciding whether virtual care can be delivered safely and effectively is complex and individualized. Providers must consider several factors, including their patient's medical problems, disease stability, whether a physical exam is required, and the risks of treatment side effects. We want to understand the different ways that breast cancer patients receive virtual care, and whether certain groups of patients are more or less likely to be offered virtual care services. As breast cancer patients on systemic therapy are at higher risk of complications, we will also examine whether virtual care is associated with increased risk of hospitalization or poorer treatment outcomes. Finally, we will use this information to create a tool which will help predict the probability that a patient will have a poor outcome within 3 months. Using this information, we hope to provide guidance to policy makers on safe delivery of virtual care in breast cancer patients.