Transforming Cancer Services Team newsletter: Spring 2024

Welcome to the spring edition of the TCST newsletter, highlighting the range of projects and programmes that the team is currently working on in partnership with stakeholders to improve patient outcomes and support the delivery of cancer services across London.
Key updates this time include:

changes to diagnostics services for adult soft tissue sarcoma referrals in London;
launch of the Community Reach project in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support;
new dates for the delivery of national cancer waits training;
a look at demand and capacity modelling for endoscopy services delivered at Epsom and St. Helier Hospitals;
Cancer Community of Practice 1st anniversary event and future webinars;
Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.

Last year, a new diagnostic pathway was introduced for adult soft tissue sarcoma referrals in London, using a Hub and Spoke service model.

The ‘hubs’ are delivered at tertiary services providing treatment and clinical oversight, whilst the ‘spokes’ deliver sarcoma local diagnostics services, from further imaging to pathology.

Bart’s Health NHS Trust has recently joined the list of spokes and is running a pilot for imaging and outpatient referrals only for soft tissue sarcoma referrals. This service is not for bone sarcoma referrals.

At the end of 2023, a London-wide review of the Urgent Suspected Cancer (USC) referral forms was carried out, inviting both primary and secondary care colleagues to provide feedback and comments.

Updates have now been completed and the forms are now being tested by a team of pan-London GP IT Champions. The new forms are expected to be launched in May 2024.

As part of the review process, the suite of tumour-specific ‘Top Tips’ have also been expanded to include Gynaecology, Haematology and Urology, in addition to Breast, Lower GI and Upper GI.

Evidence shows that certain marginalised groups in London are not being reached by cancer care surveys and are not engaging in universally offered opportunities to share their experiences and needs. As a result, their needs are not being reflected in personalised cancer care interventions or in service improvements across the cancer system.

To tackle this issue, TCST, funded and in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, has kicked off a 3-year transformation project to engage with marginalised groups across London to ensure their personalised cancer care needs are reflected at community, clinical and strategic levels of the system. The project will also look to develop community champions to help lead this work moving forward.

Since January 2022, The Transforming Cancer Services Team (TCST) has supported NHS England London Region and the London and South East Sarcoma Network (LSESN) to redesign the soft tissue sarcoma diagnostic pathway.

We are delighted that, as a collaboration, we had the opportunity to present at two sarcoma conferences this year; the Bone Cancer Research Trust and Sarcoma UK Conference in January; and the annual British Sarcoma Group Conference in February.

The redesigned pathway covers three NHS England regions, two tertiary services and nine local diagnostic services.

Cancer waits guidance training has got off to a flying start in 2024 with two sessions delivered in February and further dates scheduled for April.

Cancer waits will continue to be a priority within healthcare and TCST is continuing to offer the training in collaboration with London Cancer Alliances to support accessible standardisation of cancer waits training across the region.

The training sessions are aimed at, but not limited to, multidisciplinary team coordinators, pathway navigators, service managers, clinicians and cancer alliance colleagues in the London region.

The next training sessions are scheduled for the 17 and 30 April 2024.

Last year, TCST supported a demand and capacity refresh for endoscopy services at the Trust, working closely with colleagues and offering expertise around the modelling data requirements and analysis of modelling outputs alongside a detailed report.

The Trust approached TCST to run a refresh demand and capacity modelling exercise following the south west London system level modelling for endoscopy exercise that took place in 2021. The intention was to support with capacity planning, improvement projects and validate concerns around the pressures the service were experiencing.

It was an extremely valuable exercise to update the capacity and demand analysis, to understand the change from the baseline and to experience such a positive level of engagement from colleagues at Epsom and St Helier.

SELCA recently launched a new education resource to support primary care professionals to identify patients who require an urgent suspected cancer referral. The online resource will comprise of seven bitesize modules, each focusing on a specific cancer or group of cancers, and can be completed within 10 minutes.

The latest modules in the series to be launched cover oesophageal and brain and central nervous system cancers. The modules aim to refresh professionals’ knowledge of lung cancer symptoms and enable colleagues to refer patients with confidence for cancer diagnostic testing.

Register for the oesophageal cancer training module.

Register for the brain and central nervous system cancers training module.