The Quality Improvement Plan describes the approach taken across the NATCAN cancer audits to develop improvement goals and performance indicators, aiming for these to be measurable, actionable and improvable.
The NPaCA quality improvement goals, have been developed following a thorough scoping exercise in 2023 and in consultation with stakeholders in the Clinical Reference Group (CRG) are as follows:
- Increase the percentage of people who have diagnostic procedures and a process of diagnosis consistent with national recommendations for pancreatic cancer
- Optimise diagnostic and treatment pathways to reduce the time between referral and start of disease-targeted treatment
- Increase the percentage of people with pancreatic cancer (who are fit enough for treatment) who receive disease-targeted treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy – both curative and palliative)
- Increase the percentage of people with pancreatic cancer who receive supportive care (care that helps the person to live as well as possible with their cancer and its treatment) in line with national recommendations
- Improve outcomes for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
The NPaCA has identified ten performance indicators, mapped to five quality improvement goals and clinical guidelines. This Quality Improvement Plan sets out improvement methods, improvement activities and approaches to evaluation of these goals and activities.