Lung cancer teams pair up to review care processes and improve outcomes

Thirty lung cancer teams across England have observed how other services do things in a novel experiment to help them identify reasons for variations in lung cancer outcomes and to devise ways to improve the quality of care.

The Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project was set up to identify reasons for the variation in clinical outcomes and in patients’ experiences shown in the NHS’s national lung cancer audit.

Lung cancer teams in England have been submitting data to the national audit since 2005. Results have shown improvements in measures of processes and outcomes but also a large variation that is not wholly explained by differences in case mix (BMJ 2011;342:d3211, doi:10.1136/bmj.d3211). Results from the latest audit, for 2010, showed that the proportion of lung cancer patients discussed at a multidisciplinary meeting ranged from 67% to 100% at different NHS trusts (www.ic.nhs.uk/services/national-clinical-audit-support-programme-ncasp/audit-reports/lung-cancer).

The Royal College of Physicians and eight partner organisations, including the national cancer action team and patients’ …