A national fast track system for cancer patients that was implemented in Denmark reduced the time between a patient’s initial meeting with a healthcare provider and their first treatment by 4 weeks, according to a study presented at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium.
Denmark’s health care system is a state run system in which healthcare services are funded by taxes and patients incur no out-of-pocket costs. To avoid long waiting times for surgery and radiation therapy, which are common in other similar healthcare systems, a new fast track program was implemented in 2008, where current and potential cancer patients were given the highest priority. Further changes were made, including implementation of telephone hotlines, reserved slots in ENT and radiology, faster pathology reporting, and twice-weekly multidisciplinary tumor boards and clinics.
Danish Head and Neck Cancer Group researchers compared data from 474 patients treated in 2002 (before the fast track program) or 2010 (after the fast track program). The median treatment waiting time from first contact with a healthcare provider to initial treatment was cut drastically from 69 days in 2002 to 41 days in 2010.
“Although it is still too early to tell if the shorter waiting period has a significant effect on tumor control or survival, our study shows that the treatment waiting period can be significantly reduced by prioritizing cancer patients and that most patient and health care professionals are satisfied with the fast track system,” said Cai Grau, MD, DMSc, lead author of the study and a professor of radiation oncology at Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark. “This reduced waiting period will more than likely lead to a decrease in tumor progression and lower a patient’s risk of local recurrence and death, which ultimately will reduce the government’s costs for treating a cancer patient.”
Source: ASTRO.