Current management strategies for prostate cancer mainly focus on perioperative care, with limited attention to early screening, diagnosis, and long-term rehabilitation follow-up. Comprehensive prostate cancer management involves various healthcare institutions and specialties. The patient journey mapping is a tool that visualizes the interaction between patients and the healthcare system, integrating their emotions, behaviors, and needs, while analyzing key touchpoints, pain points, and satisfaction points. This helps optimize the patient experience. Thus, this study aims to construct a "closed-loop management" path for prostate cancer patients through community-hospital collaboration based on the patient journey map and implement it in our hospital.

A descriptive qualitative method was adopted. From September to December 2023, 15 prostate cancer patients underwent semi-structured interviews. A patient journey mapping was drawn and developed based on above interview content. The "closed-loop management" path was implemented since January 2024.

Based on the interviews about prostate cancer patients experience, management turned to the early screening and whole process management.3 key themes as early screening, precise diagnosis, and bidirectional referrals between hospital and community were identified to promote rehabilitation and behavior changes in the patient journey mapping (Figure 1). After implementation, 4,735 community prostate cancer screenings were completed, with 25% having PSA > 4. The loss rate of patients with positive biopsies decreased from 9.7% in 2023 to 3.4%, and long-term adherence improved from 79.9% to 84.6%. Overall patient distress decreased from 7.93 to 7.28 points.

Prostate cancer patients require complex health management. Current studies focus on hospital-based perioperative care, with less attention to community and home-based follow-up management. Future efforts should integrate community and hospital networks to extend the patients’ comprehensive care.