Research Round-up – January 2020 – Ruth Swann

Dr Kristi Milley spoke to Ruth Swann, Senior Cancer Information Analyst at Cancer Research UK and Public Health England about the recently published paper, ‘The frequency, nature and impact of GP-assessed avoidable delays in a population-based cohort of cancer patients’. Ruth talks about the English National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (NCDA) which looks at primary and secondary care data relating to patients diagnosed with cancer. The NCDA collected data on patient pathways through primary care to referral and cancer diagnosis and can help researchers understand the role that primary care plays, the challenges in diagnosing cancer early, what good practice occurs, and where enhancement could have the most influence. The paper that Ruth worked on collected the English data, which included over 17,000 tumour records. The team focused on avoidable days and wanted to know where in the pathway the delays were happening and therefore could then consider ways to improve the avoidable delays and thence the patient outcomes. Ruth says the avoidable delays were mostly credited to the investigation phase of the pathway.

Article

Swann, Ruth & Lyratzopoulos, Georgios & Rubin, Greg & Pickworth, Elizabeth & McPhail, Sean. (2019). The frequency, nature and impact of GP-assessed avoidable delays in a population-based cohort of cancer patients. Cancer Epidemiology. 101617. 10.1016/j.canep.2019.101617.

https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/science/article/pii/S1877782119301286

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