Pathway / Service Improvement

NCA Service improvement facilitators work with cancer care providers directly, and also through the cancer locality groups, to identify and reduce any delays along the cancer pathways to enable earlier diagnosis and thereby improve patient outcomes.

Their work will include mapping patient pathways, analysing delay reasons, standardising processes and ensuring that the patient experience is considered alongside the clinical pathway.

This work runs alongside NCA projects to improve access to radiology and pathology to enable earlier diagnosis.

Most of the work to date has been in secondary care (hospital providers) however in some areas, the service improvement facilitators work is now including primary care, seeking to improve the referrals made by GP’s into the cancer systems.