National Cancer Institute (NCI) has a long history of promoting clinical research in the community setting where patients with cancer receive care. Experience inside the NCCCP proposes that CT AIM is helpful for upgrading quality, better examination execution, progress revealing, and conveying program needs with institutional pioneers.
From 2011-2013, 21 NCCCP sites annually self-assessed their programs. From 2013-2014, NCI collaborators conducted a five-step formative evaluation of the matrix tool and in collaboration with health service researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill worked to further develop, refine, and evaluate the tool.
Sites reported significant increases in level-three scores across the original nine attributes combined (P < .001). Two specific attributes exhibited significant change:
- clinical trial portfolio diversity and management at P = .0228
- clinical trial communication at P = .0281
The formative evaluation called revisions, including renaming the Best Practice Matrix to Clinical Trial Assessment of Infrastructure Matrix (CT AIM), expanding infrastructural attributes from nine to 11, clarifying metrics, and designing new scoring tool.
Broad community input, cognitive interviews, and pilot testing improved the utility and functionality of the tool. Experience within the NCCCP suggests that the CT AIM is useful for enhancing the quality, benchmarking research performance, reporting progress, and communicating program needs with institutional leaders.
Although a small group of community cancer centres were studied, a future adaptation of this assessment tool model in other disease disciplines is of use.
Ref: https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JOP.2015.005181
