The National Cancer Action Team is supporting a number of initiatives to help develop stronger commissioning of cancer services. Part of this process is to ensure there are clinically effective pathways, accessible through the Map of Medicine, against which cancer services can be commissioned.
The Map of Medicine creates healthcare pathways and keeps them up to date with emerging evidence, informed by practice-based knowledge. As a key stakeholder, part of NCAT's involvement with the Map of Medicine is to recommend an individual with a strong clinical reputation and publishing history to act as a clinical facilitator in the update of a cancer pathway. This person is then asked to nominate other participants to make up a wider group who contribute their practice-based knowledge to the pathway.
NCAT are working closely with the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) Site Specific Clinical Reference Groups (SSCRGs) to ensure this work is ‘joined up’ and to identify clinicians to be invited to take part. The SSCRG peer review the pathway for factual consistency and accuracy and, once they are happy with it, recommend it to the clinical lead for NCIN and to NCAT which acts as the accrediting body for the pathway.
The maps provide a description of what a ‘good’ cancer pathway should look like. They enable a comparison to be made with day-to-day practice and processes. It is planned that the work being co-ordinated by NCAT to update and accredit the cancer pathways will prove to be useful in supporting the commissioning of services for people with cancer for example by referencing the appropriate cancer pathways within service specifications.
Pathways can be adapted for local use. For example the structure or flow of a pathway may be changed to reflect how local services are designed (clinical localisation). Adding additional information to a pathway, for example local referral forms, information leaflets or referral costs (administrative localisation) is also possible.
The schedule for publishing cancer pathways, for accreditation by NCAT, is as follows: