Work of the Derriford Cancer Services Team Shared as Best Practice
The work of the Cancer Services Admin Team, who track patients and meet daily to focus on ensuring patients get treated as quickly as possible, is being picked up as best practice and shared nationally.
The team, led by Cancer Performance Manager Callum Binnie, started tracking their cancer patients daily and introduced a daily escalation huddle to discuss patients who have been assigned to the responsibility of a Service Line for 2+ days. Staff come together to discuss capacity issues and track any patients who are at risk of delays in their treatment to ensure they bring dates forward or escalate upwards. The list of patients includes those with suspected or diagnosed cancer who are on the 31 and 62-day treatment pathways. The team can discuss between 300-350 patients every day.
In April 2022 Cancer Services created a departmental strategic direction with a vision of ‘efficient care for cancer patients’. They identified having ‘more focus on patients’ as their most important improvement priority because they felt like a data entry team who were adding little value to patients.
The team switched from weekly to daily tracking in July 2022. They have seen a dramatic change and the improvement has not only benefited patients but also staff in the team.
Callum explained: “Before starting, the number of patients waiting beyond the 62-day target for their treatment was high. With the daily huddles, the number of patients waiting beyond the 62-day target for treatment has reduced from 300 earlier this year to 173 and continuing to fall.
“Morale was also low in the team 18 months ago before we began. Sickness was just below 6% and staff reporting work-related stress was high. Through making changes to the way we work and allowing the team to drive forward their own improvements, that has had a positive impact on team health. Sickness had fallen to almost zero in August 2023 with reported work-related stress dropping significantly and the team’s scores have improved considerably in the staff survey, improving in 79 out of 97 metrics.”
This is one example of the many improvements being made by staff across different specialties involved in the People First programme which uses quality improvement methodology to make improvements to services.
The work has been picked up by NHS England’s National Cancer Team and will now be shared with other hospitals across the country with a view to more patients benefiting from the good practice developed at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.
Robyn Cutforth, Cancer Performance Manager with the NHS Cancer Programme, said; “What the Cancer Services Admin team have achieved with their approach to daily cancer tracking and escalation huddles is demonstrably making a difference to patients on cancer pathways, having contributed to a reduction in the 62-day backlog and bringing together teams from across the Trust to efficiently manage potential delays. It is also incredibly encouraging to see the impact the approach has had on staff morale and wellbeing within the team, and that the Trust are focusing on improving this as a priority. We have been very grateful that the team have shared their work with us, so that providers from across the country who are looking to make improvements to their patient tracking list management processes can benefit and learn from their work.”
