Medical Specialties
Help Patients Navigate Cancer Care.
Between treatments, patients manage side effects such as nausea, fever, pain and dehydration at home, often with a delayed onset, while keeping up with appointments, tests and referrals.
PATHS helps healthcare organizations turn clinical expertise into actionable patient journeys, giving patients and caregivers clear guidance while providing care teams with visibility into engagement, understanding, and progress.
Cancer Care Does Not Stop Between Treatments.
Between treatments, patients manage side effects such as nausea, fever, pain and dehydration at home, often with a delayed onset, while keeping up with appointments, tests and referrals. Once treatment ends, survivors still face follow-up care and lasting physical, emotional and financial effects.2,3
2.1M1
New cancer cases projected in the U.S. in 2026
18.6M2
Americans living with a history of cancer
10.7 per 1007
Medicare outpatient chemotherapy patients admitted within 30 days for a potentially preventable condition (2024)
The Cost to Care Teams
That burden reaches the care team as calls, portal messages and alerts. Across 15,653 U.S. oncologists, inbox messages rose 19% from 2019 to 2022 and patient messages rose 34%, with medical oncologists averaging about 200 messages a week. In a 52-practice trial of between-visit symptom monitoring, nearly half of nurses said there were too many alerts and asked for dedicated nursing time to respond.4,5
When Cancer Symptoms Aren't Managed
In a national sample, cancer patients made 4.2% of adult ED visits, and 59.7% of those visits ended in admission, compared with 16.3% for other patients. CMS publicly reports each hospital's rate of ED visits and admissions within 30 days of outpatient chemotherapy for ten potentially preventable conditions, including nausea, dehydration, pain and fever (measure OP-35). In 2024 the national rates were 10.7 admitted and 5.4 seen in the ED per 100 Medicare chemotherapy patients.3,6,7
What Better Management Does
In a randomized trial, patients who reported symptoms between visits had better quality of life, fewer ER visits (34% vs 41%) and stayed on chemotherapy longer. Across 52 community practices, weekly symptom check-ins improved physical function and symptom control, reduced ED visits, and 89% of patients would recommend them. In an observational study of older Medicare patients, costs with lay navigation fell $781 more per patient per quarter than in a matched comparison group, with faster declines in ED visits, admissions and ICU stays. These studies evaluated staffed symptom-monitoring and navigation programs, not PATHS. A Path could organize patient education and the next steps selected by the oncology team.5,8,9
Sources
- 1.Siegel RL, Kratzer TB, Wagle NS, Sung H, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2026. CA Cancer J Clin 2026.
- 2.Wagle NS, et al. Cancer treatment and survivorship statistics, 2025. CA Cancer J Clin 2025.
- 3.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Medicare Program: Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment Systems and Quality Reporting Programs (CY 2017 Final Rule), OP-35. Fed Regist 2016;81(219):79562-79892.
- 4.Holmgren AJ, Apathy NC, Crews J, Shanafelt T. National trends in oncology specialists' EHR inbox work, 2019-2022. J Natl Cancer Inst 2025;117(6):1253-1259.
- 5.Basch E, et al. Comparing the Effectiveness of Electronic Symptom Monitoring versus Usual Care in Improving Survival among Patients with Metastatic Cancer: The PRO-TECT Trial. PCORI Final Research Report. Washington (DC): PCORI; 2024.
- 6.Rivera DR, et al. Trends in Adult Cancer-Related Emergency Department Utilization: An Analysis of Data From the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample. JAMA Oncol 2017;3(10):e172450.
- 7.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Unplanned Hospital Visits - National (OP-35, calendar year 2024). Provider Data Catalog, updated September 10, 2026.
- 8.Basch E, et al. Symptom Monitoring With Patient-Reported Outcomes During Routine Cancer Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial. J Clin Oncol 2016;34(6):557-565.
- 9.Rocque GB, et al. Resource Use and Medicare Costs During Lay Navigation for Geriatric Patients With Cancer. JAMA Oncol 2017;3(6):817-825.
Healthcare teams have a critical responsibility to educate and prepare patients for that journey. But once patients leave the clinical setting, how do we know they're ready?
Do they understand their care plan? Can they apply what they've learned? Are they following through? Where do they need additional support?
Preparing patients for the journey is essential. Knowing how they're managing it creates the opportunity to improve care.
Cancer Care: From Clinical Expertise to Actionable Guidance.
Understand
Education and knowledge
Help patients and caregivers understand the treatment information their oncology team provides.
Take Action
Tasks, decisions, follow-through
Prepare patients to ask questions and follow their team's instructions for contacting support.
Manage Care
Medications, appointments, self-care
Connect guidance about visits, treatment preparation and recovery in one journey.
Demonstrate
Assessments and engagement evidence
Show the team where patients engage with guidance and where more explanation may be needed.
Meet Layla.She Takes the Starting Chemotherapy Path.
Follow Layla through an illustrative seven-Step Path. A hospital could use this structure to organize education selected by its oncology care team, help patients know when to call and connect them with navigation and support services.
Illustrative person (AI-generated). Illustrative educational Path. Completion does not establish a clinical outcome.
Read the Path Steps
- Video: Prepare for treatment day
What to expect at the infusion center, how long a visit may take and what to bring.
- Document: Keep her care calendar
Her team’s schedule of treatments, lab tests and visits, with daytime and after-hours phone numbers.
- Video: Know urgent symptoms
Why a fever during chemotherapy is an emergency, and the other symptoms her team wants reported right away.
- Audio: Manage side effects
Her team’s guidance on nausea, eating, fluids and rest between treatments.
- Quiz: Check when to call
Practice telling which symptoms need a call right away and which can wait for her next visit.
- Form: Prepare for each visit
Layla notes symptoms, questions and practical needs, like rides, work or costs, to discuss at each visit.
- Link: Find support services
Find the navigation, social work and support services her cancer center offers.
Every Workflow Should Save the Health System Time and Money.
Assign a value to the Starting Chemotherapy Path and see the results.
Path Value Estimation
minutes
per year
How many times your team already does this workflow each year.
per hour
65.5staff hours saved per year
$2,291estimated value per year
Change the assumptions above to see your estimate of time and money saved.
CREATE
The care team builds a Starting Chemotherapy Path once.
Oncology nurses turn the chemotherapy teaching they repeat before every first infusion into a structured Path and assign it a value of 21 minutes of staff education time saved per patient.
ENGAGE
Patients like Layla learn and act.
Each year, 187 patients like Layla start chemotherapy with the Starting Chemotherapy Path, saving 21 minutes of education time each.
KNOW
Data shows the impact.
That adds up to 3,927 minutes (65.5 hours) of staff time, worth an estimated $2,291 a year at $35.00 an hour.
IMPROVE
Insights improve the next Path.
Engagement, knowledge checks and questions show where the chemotherapy guidance was clear or confusing, so the care team can refine it for the next patient.
Every Cancer Care Journey Creates an Opportunity to Improve the Next.
Estimates are illustrative and use the assumptions above. They are not measured results.
Layla's Care Leads to More Than One Path.
What begins with a first chemotherapy appointment leads to more than one Path. From starting chemotherapy to understanding her cancer, managing side effects, a fever between treatments, her seven-week wellness check, her disability application, changes in appetite and her survivorship care plan, Layla needs guidance at every stage. PATHS connects multiple Paths into an experience tailored to her changing needs, and each Path could save the care team time, not only the first. This journey is illustrative.
Layla's Experience Becomes Health System Intelligence.
Layla's care doesn't stop at one Path. From her first infusion through the rest of treatment, the health system provides a Path for each stage: starting chemotherapy, understanding her cancer, managing side effects, wellness check-ins, and social work support. Each Path Layla completes also shows her care team what she engaged with, what she understood and what she still had questions about.
Understanding My Cancer Path
Layla can revisit what her team explained about her diagnosis and treatment whenever she needs it. The questions patients ask show the team which parts of the education need work.
7-Week Wellness Check Path
Layla checks in with her team during treatment. Her answers help the team see when she may need more support.
Disability Application Path
Layla gets help with the paperwork that keeps her family's finances steady. The barriers patients report show the team where social work support is needed.
The more the health system knows about each patient's experience and journey, the better it can make its workflows. What Layla and every other patient engage with, understand and ask about becomes health system intelligence: the team learns from every patient and refines each Path, so the next patient's experience is better. Clearer Paths mean fewer repeat calls and less time re-teaching the same education, and that saves time and money across the health system.
Explore More Areas of Care.
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Start With One Journey. Learn From Every Experience.
Improving cancer care doesn't require changing every workflow at once.
Start with a patient journey that matters to your organization. Build a structured approach, understand how patients and caregivers engage, and use what you learn to improve the experience.