Symptom Monitoring After Hospitalization in Cancer Care

Robert Daly, MD, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the impact and implementation of systematic symptom monitoring for patients discharged after an inpatient hospitalization.

Dr. Daly explains that the program used electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) to track symptoms from home. These symptom reports were linked to automated alerts for the care team, enabling nurses to identify and address issues early, often preventing unplanned readmissions. Patient satisfaction with the system was high, with a Net Promoter Score exceeding 80%, reflecting strong engagement and appreciation for timely clinical responses.

Education was a key component of successful implementation, both for patients, on how the system could help manage their symptoms, and for clinical staff, on workflows for responding effectively to alerts. Dr. Daly notes that hospital admissions are periods of significant distress for patients and caregivers, with nearly one-third of discharged patients readmitted within 30 days. Reducing this rate through structured symptom monitoring represents a meaningful improvement in post-hospital cancer care.

Looking ahead, Dr. Daly emphasizes the importance of matching reported symptoms with the right interventions at the right time. For example, severe pain reports must trigger rapid deployment of appropriate clinical resources to manage symptoms in the home environment.

Future directions for the program include expanding home-based care capabilities such as at-home laboratory testing and vital sign monitoring, with the overarching goal of delivering care directly to the community, minimizing acute care utilization, and improving quality of life for patients with cancer. Although Dr. Daly’s study was conducted as part of a thoracic oncology program, these findings can apply to all malignancies, according to Daly.