Table 11 Professional interventions: Nominated research ideas

Educational outreach visits (EOV)/audit and feedback (AF)

Better quality trials directly evaluating specific modalities and methods of EOV (proper randomization, baseline data, variety of outcomes--including patient outcomes and costing)

Better quality trials directly evaluating specific modalities and methods of methods of AF (as above)

For which clinicians, clinical conditions, and stage in the continuum is EOV most impactful?

For which clinicians, clinical conditions, and stage in the continuum is AF most impactful?

What is the impact of regional AF versus individual AF on changing patterns of practice?

IT/IM/informatic interventions

Better quality trials directly evaluating specific modalities and methods of informatic interventions (proper randomization

For which clinicians, clinical conditions, and stage in the continuum are informatics interventions most impactful?

Develop methods to enable practice guidelines to be directly integrated into informatic interventions

What is the cost effectiveness of different informatic interventions?

Are informatic interventions effective in non-drug-prescribing aspects of cancer care?

Local opinion leader interventions

Methodological development in choosing local opinion leaders in a reliable manner

Methodological development in understanding factors that increase and decrease sustainability of local opinion leader designation

Research to better understand for which provider groups and under what clinical contexts (cancer diagnosis, practice setting, stage of the cancer trajectory) local opinion leaders are most effective

Tailored interventions

Methodological analysis of the operational techniques of tailoring in existing high-quality primary studies

Methodological development to determine when tailoring has or has not addressed identified barriers

Identification of defining factors of effective tailoring

Direct comparisons of different tailoring interventions (tactic and modality, etc.) on uptake of evidence, processes of care, and clinical outcomes

Clinical pathway interventions

Testing of clinical pathway interventions on different stages of continuum of cancer care

Testing of clinical pathway interventions with different healthcare providers involved in cancer control

Methodological development to determine for which clinical problem (e.g., cancer diagnosis, complexity of care) clinical pathways are most effective

Direct comparisons of different clinical pathway strategies (methods and modality, etc.) on uptake of evidence, processes of care, and clinical outcomes

Is the introduction of clinical pathways cost effective in Ontario/Canada?

Guidelines

Compare and contrast use of and impact of guidelines on processes of care and clinical outcome as a function of cancer care provider

Testing innovative strategies to disseminate guideline messages to different providers

Testing of innovative strategies to disseminate guideline messages to administrators

Testing of innovate strategies to disseminate guideline messages to policy makers

Discharge planning

What are the defining features/components to a discharge plan that are linked to patient satisfaction, provider satisfaction, process outcomes, and clinical outcomes?

Determining the specific clinical components for discharge plans for different cancer diagnoses