April 26, 2005

The Cancer Quality Council of Ontario (CQCO) and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have launched the Cancer System Quality Index – a Web-based tool for tracking cancer and cancer services in Ontario. The first of its kind in North America, the index evaluates progress against cancer and points out where prevention, treatment and care improvements can be made. It aims to motivate health care providers to make changes so that the cancer services in demand are available to everyone. In Northwestern Ontario, Regional Cancer Care at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre has identified some of the areas for improvement through this Index.

The Index, developed by cancer clinical, policy and research experts, has 25 indicators that measure:

• How accessible services are to patients
• How efficiently resources are being used
• How cancer affects people and cancer risk factors
• The quality of treatment
• Our ability to understand and measure quality improvements

“This baseline measure is an important first step to what we hope will be a full and complete assessment of the cancer system in Ontario,” said Dr. Terry Sullivan, President and CEO of Cancer Care Ontario. “Publicly tracking our progress and areas for improvement will bring attention to quality issues so that we can reduce the number of people getting cancer and improve the lives of those who do.”

More than 2,500 people in Northwestern Ontario are diagnosed with cancer each year and one out of every three will be diagnosed with cancer at some time in their lives. Progress against the disease can been seen in improved cancer survival rates – the five-year survival rate now exceeds 50 per cent for most cancers. “We have made significant progress in Northwestern Ontario,” said Ron Saddington, President and CEO of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. “People who are diagnosed with cancer in our region are receiving high quality care and are living better, longer lives than ever before. To make sure that we continue to make progress, we need to know where we can make more improvements and focus our energies on these areas.”

The cancer system in Northwestern Ontario has improved immeasurably over the last number of years, with successes in survival rates, wait times, early detection, and timely access to care and services. The primary areas for improvement for Northwestern Ontario fall in the area of colorectal cancer detection and treatment. Colorectal cancer has no early symptoms, and by the time people are concerned enough to visit their doctors for testing, colorectal cancer has already developed. “We have had colorectal cancer identified as a high priority for quite some time,” said Michael Power, Vice President of Regional Cancer Services. “It is always a challenge to determine where you want to concentrate efforts, when everything driving performance in our cancer system should be a priority. With the Cancer System Quality Index, we will be able to better focus our efforts on those top priorities and have defined goals around our plan to address the issues. With colorectal cancer, we have a number of initiatives in place, like our new colorectal cancer awareness campaign, the Bottom Line, the commitment to improve access to colonoscopy, and the Fecal Occult Blood Test (FOBT) awareness campaigns, to name a few.”

Dr. Sunil Gulavita, Head of Radiation Oncology at the Regional Cancer Centre in Thunder Bay, reinforced that area cancer patients are receiving timely and accessible treatment, when benchmarked against the rest of the province. Gulavita, a prostate cancer specialist, was quick to point out that the Thunder Bay District ranked 1st in the province when looking at the “access to radiation therapy” indicator. Nationally, it is agreed by experts, that approximately 50% of all cancer patients should have access to radiation therapy as part of their disease management plan. In Ontario, only a third of cancer patients are accessing radiation therapy as part of their treatment plans. This is in large measure due to referring physician practice patterns, physicial proximity to a regional cancer centre, and the lengthy waits for therapy in some southern Ontario centres. The Thunder Bay District was one of only a handful of the more than 40 districts in Ontario to achieve the benchmark and finished first overall.

The Cancer System Quality Index identifies areas of the cancer system where quality improvements can be made, providing an online easily accessible reference and set of guidelines. For the most part, cancer care treatment and services offered across Northwestern Ontario is comprehensive, but there are areas that must be addressed. Essentially, patients are receiving good quality cancer care, but there must be some improvements to both waiting times and access to care. Too many people in Northwestern Ontario are likely to get cancer in the future, due to an aging and growing population, as well as increasing their risk for cancer due to unhealthy lifestyles; more people are being screened for some cancers, but overall there is too little screening to detect cancer earlier, when treatments are most effective; the ability to track cancer at the point of diagnosis is better than ever before, but real-time information that would improve our ability to make course corrections quickly is not yet available.

“Our oncologists are committed to offering the highest quality of care possible and we collectively see the Cancer System Quality Index as a decision making tool that will help us develop new programs to respond to needs,” said Dr. Dimitrios Vergidis, Chief of Oncology. “For the first time, we will have data that compares our performance with that of other centres and regions in the province and we can safely assess how well we are doing.”

The Cancer Quality Council of Ontario monitors and reports to the public on the quality and performance of the cancer system, and Cancer Care Ontario is a policy, planning and research organization that advises the Ontario government on all aspects of provincial cancer care, provides information to health care providers and decision-makers, and motivates better cancer system performance.

Link to the Cancer System Quality Index via the Cancer Care Ontario website: www.cancercare.on.ca/qualityindex

Click here to download CQI comparison of Northwestern Ontario & Ontario. (PDF 83 KB)

For more information, contact

Jacqueline McKinnon

Phone: (807) 684-7239

Email: mckinnoj@tbh.net

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