Technology Enhanced Nurse Navigator Trial (TENN Trial)

• Treatment Adherence [ Time Frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Adherence will be determined by review of the claims data. All claims, including hormone, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, doctor's visits, and hospitalizations, are sent through the BCCDT program. For chemotherapy and radiation therapy, relative dose intensity (RDI) will be measured. Adherence to hormone therapy will be measured as the medication possession ratio (MPR).A self-reported measure of adherence will be correlated with these more objective measures (Morisky et al. 1986).
  
  
• Fatigue [ Time Frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  Fatigue will be measured using a visual analogue scale. The FACT-B will be used to measure quality of life. The FACT-B is the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast, a reliable and valid measure for assessing subjective health-related quality of life among breast cancer survivors (Brady et al. 1997). The FACT-B includes both the FACT-General (FACT-G) and the Breast Cancer Subscale (BCS). The FACT-B has shown high internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.90 (Brady et al. 1997).
  
  

• Patient satisfaction [ Time Frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  As recommended by the NCI Navigation Research Program, we will include the Communication and Attitudinal Self-Efficacy scale for cancer (CASE-cancer) designed to measure self-efficacy and positive attitude for cancer patients (Wolf et al. 2005).
  
  
• Quality of life [ Time Frame: Baseline, 6 months and 12 months ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  As a measure of distress, we will use the Impact of Events scale revised (IES-R), an updated version of the original Impact of Events scale (IES) (Horowitz et al. 1979;Weiss et al. 1997). The IES-R is a validated measure of responses to a stressful life event and addresses distress and intrusive thoughts consistent with responses to the DSM-IV diagnosis criteria of PTSD. The IES-R is readily modified to address an event such as diagnosis of cancer or a chemotherapy-related adverse event
  
  

Treatment for breast cancer has been proven to decrease death from breast cancer. The key to the success of treatment is getting the right dose at the right time, but many women do not receive optimum treatment. Treatment delays, missed appointments, and failure to take medication on a regular basis lead to poorer survival from breast cancer. In a study among low income women only 60% of women adhered to the treatment, that is, taking their medication at least 80% of the time. Twenty percent of women, who were supposed to take 5 years of hormone treatment, had stopped their medication in the first year. Similar problems occur with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Many barriers interfere with adherence to treatment, including poor symptom management, missed appointments, and cancelled appointments. Nurse navigation can help manage and minimize symptoms, assist with appointment reminders, and answer questions to obtain optimum breast cancer treatment. The goal of the proposed study is to rigorously test the delivery of nurse-navigation through a web-based knowledge and communication portal (Technology Enhanced Nurse-directed Navigation (TENN) for its impact on treatment adherence and symptom management. The success of this program will be measured by improved treatment adherence, health outcome measures such as fatigue and symptom management, patient-reported quality of life, reduced distress, and patient satisfaction.