Towards sustainable cancer care: Reducing inefficiencies, improving outcomes – A policy report from the All.Can initiative

Up to 20% of current European healthcare spending is used for ineffective interventions. The All.Can initiative is a multi-national cross-sector collaboration targeted at improving the efficiency of cancer care and gathering better evidence to inform policy development. This most recent publication from the initiative highlights current healthcare inefficiencies, in particular the fragmentation of current health systems and the importance of investing in the right data. The role of primary care in cancer care is also higlighted. In particular, the need to focus more on prevention, that in some circumstances care could be delivered just as effectively in a lower-cost setting such as primary care and that during follow-up patients often lack a clear point of contact in primary care, which may lead to avoidable hospitalisations. The initiative also stress the importance of focusing efforts on delivering the best possible outcomes to patients and that we should be ready to scrutinise and change practice if it falls short of achieving this goal.   Read the full article here.