In their new JAMA Network Open study, PhD candidate Felipe Montano-Campos, Associate Professor Aasthaa Bansal, and co-authors tracked 5 years of monthly tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) adherence in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients.
“After adjusting for patient and provider characteristics — including differences in oncology practice styles — we found that oncologist-patient concordance (i.e., shared identity traits) was associated with higher and more sustained adherence over time” says Felipe.
To rule out the possibility that concordant relationships were driven by patient selection or provider sorting, the team formally tested whether concordance was associated with underlying clinical, sociodemographic, or care-seeking characteristics. It was not — the association with adherence remained robust.
This is one of the first studies to isolate the long-term behavioral impact of patient-provider concordance in real-world oncology care.
This research was supported by grant R37-CA218413 from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.