Ajay Aggarwal, Professor and Consultant Clinical Oncologist. Former Director UK National Cancer Audits, shared on LinkedIn:
“As obvious as it sounds – Quality Matters! However this is increasingly become part of the policy rhetoric of a feature of a good health system without the strategic planning and funding needed to drive performance.
The UK national cancer audits have demonstrated that too many patients don’t get the right treatment, at the right time, delivered with the right quality. Yet to address this, needs to go beyond the ‘let’s leave hospitals to work it out’ the data is there. It requires sustained investment.
To support the NHS to deliver improvement in cancer care, partnering with THIS Institute (The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute) we have developed a novel digital platform – ‘CAN DO’ which is now live. The aim is to move beyond the data – identifying the problem, appraising interventions and co-designing solutions that can be implemented.
I encourage you to join if you have an interest in improving cancer care. The first project is focused on cancer waiting times.
Just as an example of what QI done well can achieve at the national level. When I led the development of the radiotherapy outcome reporting programme for prostate cancer, my own centre was found to have high rates of toxicity.
We reviewed our processes, learnt from the best performers and changed our protocols. Our outcomes are now some of the best in the country (3 fold less toxicity). Most importantly this required no additional monetary investment despite the myriad of ‘novel technologies’ pushed to achieve the same goals. We publish our approach here.
We will never have the marketing power of industry, so how to convince policy makers that quality improvement is the magic bullet they have been waiting for and invest? I suspect it will be a life long pursuit.”
Title: Public Reporting of Outcomes in Radiation Oncology: The National Prostate Cancer Audit
Authors: Ajay Aggarwal, Julie Nossiter, Matthew Parry, Arunan Sujenthiran, Anthony Zietman, Noel Clarke, Heather Payne, Jan van der Meulen.
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Title: Driving Improvements in Prostate Cancer Radiation Therapy Outcomes Through a National Quality Assurance Program: Results From a Large UK Academic Center
Authors: Vishal Manik, Gowardhanan Doss, Georgios Ntentas, SoonMoh Wong, Sangeeta Mannion, Kathryn Innes, Teresa Guerrero-Urbano, Stephen Morris, Simon Hughes, Vinod Mullassery, Victoria Harris, Gurdip Azad, Ingrid White, Ajay Aggarwal, Sindu Vivekanandan.
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