Breakfast Seminar: Lisa Barbera, University of Toronto, Cancer Care Ontario

Dr. Barbera’s main area of interest is health services research in cancer. Her primary expertise is in using large administrative health datasets to study health care service use. This talk will describe the Patient Reported Outcomes Program at Cancer Care Ontario, outline how this is being used to drive quality of care, and will detail how the data has been used in research.

Health service use at end of life in cancer patients
Health service use at the end of life at a population level can reflect the quality of end-of-life care. Services such as hospitalization, location of death, emergency department visits or palliative care service use are measureable with administrative data. Dr. Barbera has studied these services extensively in Ontario and is funded by the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control for a four-province comparison study.

Patient reported outcomes and symptom management
Dr. Barbera has spent the last several years evaluating the impact of patient-reported symptoms by the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale on health service use at a population level. She has been recently funded by the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research to evaluate the management of pain in cancer patients in the province on Ontario. Dr. Barbera is also the lead for patient reported outcomes and symptom management at Cancer Care Ontario.

The Cancer Outcomes Research Program Breakfast Seminar Series is organized by Drs. Ethan Basch, Stephanie Wheeler, and Matthew Nielsen. Please arrive at 7:45am to join us for a hot breakfast buffet prior to the start of our 8:00am meeting. Parking is available at the Rams Head parking deck next door; we will give you vouchers to park for free.