Improving Cancer Care Reviews For Men

Summary

Cancer care reviews play an important role in supporting those who’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer. We provide some insights into what men have told us about their experience of cancer care reviews and provide some quality improvement recommendations for your practice, PCN, ICB, Trust or Health Board.

Background

Cancer care reviews (CCR) form part of Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) whereby, men with prostate cancer, have a conversation with their GP within 3 months of diagnosis and then annually for 5 years, to discuss their needs.

There are over 400,000 men living with or after prostate cancer and by 2040, this figure is predicted to double to 800,000 men. So it’s imperative that GPs conduct quality cancer care reviews to ensure that men’s needs are being understood and addressed.

Patient Experience

We recently spoke to men diagnosed with prostate cancer and when we asked them if they’d had a CCR, and over 70% of them stated that they hadn’t spoken to anyone about their support needs.

These men stated that they felt isolated, had a lack of knowledge about the role of primary care and hadn’t had a structured conversation about their cancer, leaving them feeling like they’d no control over their health and being disempowered.

This is worrying, particularly when we’ve cross referenced their experience with reported QOF outcomes (2022-2023). The majority of ICBs nationally are reporting that they are achieving the thresholds of 70-90% of patients receiving a review.

When we asked men what they wanted, they stated that the CCR should be a more formalised experience, so that they can prepare for it in order to have a robust conversation about their needs.

Key Considerations

An ideal quality improvement project would be to consider the below, discussing and reviewing within your PCN, ICB or Cancer Alliance your cancer care protocol and how patients are supported.

Opportunities for improving the process for initiating CCRs so that men are prepared for them.
Proactive conversations with men to support any issues related to their sexual health and any incontinence post treatment. Many men experience this as a side effect, but often, are too embarrassed to mention it. We know that many will talk about it if asked by a HCP.