Bon Secours Mercy Health, Youngstown, OH
Dwight Earl Heron, Jean Blair, Jawad Elias Francis, Kristina Stoeppler-Biege, Lijo Simpson, Jeremy Stapp, Joseph Kim
Background: Biomarker testing is the standard of care for patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma, but limited tissue samples may lead to incomplete testing. Especially if quantity is not sufficient (QNS) requiring additional samples, a prolonged time-to-initiation of treatment (TTT) has been shown to negatively impact clinical outcomes. Bon Secours Mercy Health (BSMH) Youngstown, Ohio reviewed biomarker testing data and found: 1) only 41% of patients received complete biomarker testing, and 2) in the case of QNS when liquid biopsies were utilized, the time from diagnosis to results took an average of 42 days. BSMH worked in collaboration with OncoLens and Q Synthesis to address these issues and reduce the TTT. Methods: A multidisciplinary team developed a new workflow for patients diagnosed with advanced NSCLC. The pilot involved collecting both tissue and blood at the time of needle biopsy and working with a single reference lab for testing. Physicians and nurses in radiology and pulmonology were in-serviced on the new workflow. As patients were being prepared for a biopsy procedure, nurses collected two tubes of blood for liquid biopsy. After the procedure, both the tissue and blood were sent to pathology and if pathology confirmed an advanced lung adenocarcinoma diagnosis, both samples were sent to the reference lab for testing. The lab developed a new process to hold blood and test it only when the tissue was QNS. If QNS, tissue testing for PD- L1 was prioritized and additional biomarker tests were completed with the blood sample. If tissue quantity was sufficient, unused blood was discarded. The lab charged for a single test regardless of whether the test was performed on tissue and/or blood. Results: The QI project ran from Sept 2021 - Dec 2022 and achieved two improvements: 1) a 39.6% increase in complete biomarker testing in patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma (80.6% post-intervention) and 2) a decrease of 15.7 days from diagnosis to complete liquid biopsy test results (27.2 days post-intervention). Conclusions: This QI project demonstrated a significant improvement in overall biomarker testing rates and a nearly 50% reduction in the time to completion of testing. It also demonstrated how hospitals and reference labs may coordinate efforts to streamline biomarker testing with the aim of improving clinical outcomes through reductions of TTT.
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