A recently published report from Public Policy Projects (PPP) and Civica recommends accelerating the uptake of digital technology integration to improve cancer pathway outcomes.
The report, titled “Improving cancer pathways: Challenges, Overcoming Barriers and Digital Solutions” was informed by a round-table discussion held with a multidisciplinary group of experts, including clinical oncologists, cancer alliance representatives, clinical nurse specialists, and more. It finds that there are substantial opportunities for improvements in cancer pathways, which could have profound impacts on capacity, productivity, patient outcomes and patient experience.
Cancer care services across the UK are stretched and struggling to meet demand. With cancer incidence in England set to rise significantly over the next 20 years, NHS diagnostic and treatment capacities will be further tested. To meet demand both now and in the future, pathways need to be critically evaluated to ensure they are fit for purpose across different cancer types, equitable across patient groups, efficient and sustainable.
The report makes the case for further transformation and outlines key enablers of pathway best practice, such as health literacy, patient centricity and improved usage of digital technology.
The report makes a number of recommendations including;
- The forthcoming cancer plan must clearly state ‘what good looks like’ across cancer pathways. The plan must also promote the implementation of best practice across the country providing greater funding incentives to providers to carry out improvements across tumour sites. This should include guidance on data sharing across primary and secondary care and recommended, proven digital solutions including single EPR systems.
- Guidance should include the use and implementation of patient feedback tools such as electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROMs) and personalised stratified follow-up pathways (PSFUs) together with evaluating pathways that have a greater emphasis on patient experience.
- Best practice pathway guidance should examine asynchronous multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) to determine whether they might be more effective than the current MDTs.
- To reduce the administrative burden the guidelines should recommend specific digital automation tools. NHS England should focus on improving health literacy through processes such as working to embed public health messaging into broadcast standards and using innovative communications campaigns to target at-risk groups such as homeless populations.
- NHS England, as well as local systems and providers, should use the time ‘waiting’ on pathways, this is an opportunity to engage with them in terms of what to expect and how to prepare, as well as providing information on health literacy and screening programmes.
- There is an issue with over-piloting within the NHS, driven by the fragmented nature of the healthcare system. A central testing site for innovations should be considered that can effectively and centrally approve and promote the adoption of evidence approved innovations.
- Greater guidance on frailty is needed when patients are referred to diagnosis and treatment as there are many patients being referred onto 62-day target for treatment pathways that are not fit enough to withstand treatment.
- Self-referral mechanisms or referral through community organisations and place-based assets should be considered to reduce inequalities in access to healthcare and support earlier diagnosis in populations that traditionally present late and might find access to primary care and articulating symptoms challenging.
You can read the full report HERE
