Unwanted variations in cancer care can lead to avoidable negative patient outcomes. Victorian Tumour Summits are clinician-led forums that use linked population-level health datasets to identify variations and reflect this information back to health services. In addition to providing a broad overview of the Tumour Summits, this presentation will focus on recent summits on breast and prostate cancers.
We analysed health datasets linked to the Victorian Cancer Registry (record of all Victorian incident cancer diagnoses). These datasets include the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (public and private hospital admissions), Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (emergency department presentation), Victorian Integrated Non-Admitted Health (non-admitted health services), and the Victorian Death Index. The questions are guided in part by relevant Optimal Care Pathways, which set out best practice standards for each tumour stream.
The Prostate Cancer Summit identified variations in survival by region of residence, higher prostatectomy rates in least disadvantaged areas, and variations in initial treatment based on region of residence. The discussions from the Summit lead to recommendations for activities to be undertaken by the Integrated Cancer Services to reduce any variations identified. The Breast Cancer Summit identified variations between surgical campuses in time from diagnosis to surgery and time from surgery to adjuvant chemotherapy, and variation in neoadjuvant chemotherapy rates by region of surgical campus.
Tumour Summits are a model for how health services, clinicians, and data specialists can work together to identify and minimise disparities in cancer treatment and outcomes.