Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in Australian women. Cancer care efficiency means providing high-quality treatment using available human, financial, infrastructural, and technological resources, while focusing on patients’ needs. Current ways of measuring cancer care don’t fully capture patients’ perspectives or experiences. Rising costs and inefficiencies in cancer negatively affect patients’ health, quality of life, and finances.
Previous studies have looked at various individual aspects of patient-centred care. These include how long it takes to get a diagnosis/treatment, how palliative care meets patient needs, what patients report about their care, how decisions are made together with doctors, and whether care is fair for all groups.
All.Can’s global patient survey found four issues cancer patients noted affected the efficiency of their care: diagnostic delays, variability in involvement in decision-making, non-joined-up care, and out-of-pocket costs. They narrowed down 137 ways to measure cancer care efficiency to 8 key measures.
Our study aims to use these 8 measures to comprehensively analyse how efficient breast cancer care is at our hospital. We want to see if we can collect this information and how we perform in these metrics. We will look at how long things take (such as getting a diagnosis or starting treatment), how well care is coordinated, and how patient-centred it is. We will also assess if interpreters are used at appointments for patients who speak different languages. This will be the first international trial of All.can efficiency metrics.
