RCT to evaluate effectiveness of telephone, mail or email approaches to collecting Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) data using Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry-Victoria (PCOR-VIC)

Description of intervention(s) / exposure: Men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer and who have consented to contributing data to the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry Victoria (PCOR-VIC) will be eligible to participate in this project. Three different methods of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) data collection by telephone or mail or email will be introduced to assess the quality of life of prostate cancer patients using EPIC -26 tools. Details of each of the three different interventions are described below: Men are contacted to confirm that clinical data are accurate and up-to-date and to collect PROMS using the validated EPIC-26 quality of life instrument. Contact is made any time within a window period of 21 days either side of the anniversary date for data collection (henceforth recorded as the “Anniversary Date”). This is 12 months from the date of the positive biopsy for patients who do not proceed to active treatment or only receive androgen deprivation therapy; or 12 months from the date on which final initial treatment, or course of treatment, finished. For surgery and low-dose rate (seed) brachytherapy, this is the date of the procedure. For radiotherapy and chemotherapy it is the date that the last dose of therapy was provided; for radiotherapy this is usually six weeks after radiotherapy was commenced and for chemotherapy this is usually 12 months after treatment commenced. Intervention A: PROMs data collection by follow up data collectors over the telephone 1. An attempt to contact patients via phone will be made up until 21 days post diagnosis/treatment. Approximately each day a data collector will make one attempt to contact the patient 2. Patients responding will have PROMS entered directly to the PCOR-VIC web system 3. Patients will be considered lost to follow up if they do not respond after 21 days from 12 month Anniversary Date. Intervention B: Data collection by follow up data collectors by mail (postal service) 1. The EPIC-26 survey will be mailed to patients if they are contacted any time from 21 days before, up to and including, the Anniversary Date. The survey will be accompanied with a personalised, signed letter with instructions and a postage-paid, self-addressed envelope; 2. If the survey is not returned by 14 days post the Anniversary Date, patients will be telephoned as per Intervention A. Data collector will make one attempt each day i.e 14 attempts in total. 3. Lost to follow up – refer to Step 3 of Intervention A. Intervention C: Data collection by E-mail link to online survey 1. If email is not available then the participants will randomly assign to either telephone (intervention A) or mail (Intervention B). 2. In this method, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which is the address of a web page link to the EPIC-26 survey will be emailed to participants if they are contacted any time from 21 days before, up to and including, the Anniversary Date. 3. If participants do not complete the online survey by 14 days post the Anniversary Date, patients will be telephoned as per Intervention A. Data collector will make one attempt each day i.e 14 attempts in total. 4. Lost to follow up – refer to Step 3 of Intervention A.