Measuring uptake of the 2024 national standards for survivorship care: Insights from National Cancer Institute funded pilot projects.

Abstract

Purpose: Measuring alignment with clinical program standards is essential for strengthening cancer survivorship care yet remains challenging due to the range and duration of services involved. The 2024 National Standards for Survivorship Care provide aspirational recommendations across three domains-policy, processes, and evaluation/assessment-for health systems developing survivorship care. Following their release, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded 18 supplements to understand alignment of existing services and programs with the standards and identify implementation barriers and facilitators. This report synthesizes measurement tools and approaches used in the supplements to evaluate alignment with the standards.

Methods: Trained abstractors used a standardized codebook to extract project-level and measure-level characteristics, including the specific national standards assessed, data types, data collection methods, and respondent characteristics.

Results: Fourteen of 18 supplement projects contributed 91 measurement tools (surveys, interview protocols, environmental scan protocols, EHR/administrative variables). Most addressed the health system process standards (82.4%), while health system policy (31.9%) and evaluation/assessment standards were less represented (15.4%). Existence or occurrence of care elements was most commonly assessed (72.5%); less commonly captured was the quality or degree to which a standard was met or how care processes occurred.

Conclusions: These findings identify opportunities to improve how alignment with national standards is measured, including the need for shared operational definitions for each standard that are applicable across cancer care delivery settings and support consistent measurement.

Implications for cancer survivors: Stronger measurement infrastructure helps healthcare systems identify gaps in survivorship care, supporting comprehensive care for a growing cancer survivor population.