Recording: CAPO Recommendations for Survivorship Models of Follow-Up Care: 2025 Best Models for Adults Post-Treatment

Recorded April 9, 2025 Hosted by: Dr. Doris Howell According to the Canadian Cancer Society, over 1.5 million people in Canada were living with or beyond cancer at the beginning of 2018. The Institute of Medicine (IOM), From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition (2006), and many other subsequent reports have called for improvement in the quality of care provided to cancer survivors and for comprehensive, coordinated, and tailored follow-up care. Cancer survivorship care is not a “one-size-fits-all" model. Many factors influence the organization and structure of survivorship models of care, such as the number and types of survivors being served, services and financial/human resources, risk of recurrence, cancer treatment exposures and resulting long-term symptoms and late-effect risks, geographic location and care setting, and patient preferences for type of follow-up care. Types of survivorship care models include community-based shared-care models, academically-based comprehensive survivor program models, nurse-practitioner–led shared care, and multidisciplinary programs for high-risk populations. Survivorship has various definitions extending from early survivorship (diagnosis and acute cancer treatment) to post-treatment and long-term medical care and for those living with advanced cancer as a chronic illness. For this guidance document, we defined a model of survivorship care as a program for cancer survivors that addressed two or more of the IOM components for survivorship care. Additionally, we focussed only on individuals who have completed active cancer treatment and are transitioning from acute to more long-term medical care and follow-up services.