Uptake of palliative care services in patients with non-small cell lung cancer receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy: The Mayo Clinic Florida experience.

269 Background: There are strong data showing that patients (pts) with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving chemotherapy experience better quality of life (QOL) and longer overall survival (OS) when palliative care (PC) services are integrated early in their treatment course. Therefore, at our cancer center, pts with stage IV NSCLC have been referred to PC by oncology providers. In this study, we evaluated the uptake of PC services, specifically in pts with NSCLC who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). ICIs have been considered to have less severe or less frequent adverse effects as compared to chemotherapy, possibly leading to fewer referrals to PC. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of all pts at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Florida who received single-agent ICI therapy for the treatment of stage IV NSCLC at any point between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2022. The primary aim was to evaluate the uptake of PC services before or during treatment with ICIs. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize pt demographics and outcomes. Results: 129 pts were identified. 53.4% were male, and 46.6% were female. The majority of pts (84.4%) were white. 62 pts (48.0%) were seen by a PC provider before or during ICI treatment; 41 of these (31.7%) were seen by PC after starting ICI therapy. When grouped by year of ICI initiation, 30/73 pts (41.0%) treated between 2015 and June 2018 were seen by a PC provider, as compared to 15/31 pts (48.3%) treated between July 2018 and June 2020 and 17/25 pts (68.0%) treated between July 2020 and July 2022. Interestingly, the majority of pts who received PC services in the 2020-2022 group (12/17, or 70.5%) were seen by a PC provider for the first time prior to ICI initiation, whereas the majority of pts who received PC services prior to July 2020 (37/45, or 82.2%) were seen by a PC provider for the first time after ICI initiation. The mean number of PC visits increased from 1.59 in the 2015-2018 group to 1.84 in the 2018-2020 group and 4.96 in the 2020-2022 group. Conclusions: Uptake of PC services in pts with stage IV NSCLC receiving single-agent ICIs at our cancer center has increased over time, which is encouraging. Nevertheless, the numbers remain suboptimal, with less than 70% of pts receiving PC services. We plan to develop a multidisciplinary quality improvement project involving implementation of a mechanism to ensure that most patients with stage IV NSCLC, regardless of the type of systemic treatment they receive, are receiving PC services.