What is the APECC study?

The Institute of Medicine recommends the development and use of patient-centered measures to assess the quality of cancer care from the patient's perspective. These measures would complement indicators of clinical and technical quality.

Such patient-centered evaluations have been typically conducted through patient surveys. However, as highlighted by the report of NCI's Cancer Outcomes Measurement Working Group, comprehensive, psychometrically sound, cancer-specific measures of patients' experience of, and satisfaction with the care they receive are lacking.

To move the science forward in the area of cancer patients' experience of care assessment and to stimulate future methodological work, the Outcomes Research Branch conducted the Assessment of Patients' Experience of Cancer Care (APECC) study, funded as part of the SEER Rapid Response Surveillance Study contract mechanism. The main objective of the study was to develop and pilot test a survey instrument that would comprehensively assess cancer survivors' experiences of and satisfaction with the follow-up cancer care they received in the previous 12 months.