Primary Care

This page provides details of the NCIN's work on primary care.

Events

On February 12th 2013, the NCIN, in partnership with the Royal College of GPs held a workshop.

This workshop was developed and presented jointly by the National Cancer Intelligence Network and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Its aim was to engage with primary care clinicians to increase their understanding of the range and potential for the use of data to support improvements in standards of care and outcomes for cancer patients and to find ways of integrating their advice into the work of National Cancer Intelligence Network.

Since its establishment in 2008, the NCIN has set up a wide range of groups to obtain the specialist clinical advice that underpins its work, but has not developed a mechanism for the systematic incorporation of a primary care perspective. A number of issues have emerged in recent years that have made it clearer than ever that engaging with the primary care community is essential. These include:

  • The realisation that late presentation of cancer in the UK is likely to be a factor in our poor survival statistics compared to  many other countries 
  • The increasing availability of primary care data
  • The central position that primary care now plays in the commissioning of health care
  • An increasing body of primary care clinicians engaged in research relating to cancer

It was agreed that a better understanding of the power of good data on cancer patients relating to primary care and the interface with secondary care was essential and that we were entering an era where the range and quality of such data made it a very exciting field in which to be working.

As a result of the workshop it has been agreed that the NCIN will establish a cross-cutting primary care clinical reference group and that there is also a need to establish a process by which primary care input on specific issues could be provided to Site-Specific Clinical Reference Groups (SSCRG).

To date, the only SSCRG with a GP representative is the skin cancer group, but several other groups were very keen bring a primary care voice to the table. There was a great deal of engagement from the delegates at the meeting and there was support for developing a wider, ‘virtual’ group of individuals from primary care (and not necessarily all of them GPs) with whom the NCIN could engage in the longer term.  

The workshop presentations can be found here:

Joint RCGP/NCIN workshop - Cancer Intelligence for primary care

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