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<p><em>Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer </em>(January 2011) is backed by
an additional £750 million over the four year Spending Review period including over
£450 million to achieve early diagnosis. The earlier diagnosis money is designed to
support improved direct general practitioner (GP) access to four key diagnostic tests
to support the diagnosis of brain tumours, bowel, lung, and ovarian cancers; and increased
testing and treatment costs in secondary care. GPs are able to access these tests
directly in cases where the two-week urgent referral pathway is not appropriate but
a patient’s symptoms require further investigation. The intention is that more people
presenting with relevant symptoms will be tested and at an earlier stage.</p><p> </p><p>
</p><p> </p><p>In 2012, the Department published ‘Direct access to diagnostic tests
for cancer: best practice referral pathways for general practitioners’ to provide
criteria for accessing these diagnostic tests.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The earlier
diagnosis money also supports centrally led Be Clear on Cancer (BCOC) symptom awareness
campaigns to raise the public’s awareness of cancer symptoms and encourage people
with persistent symptoms to go to the doctor. Since 2011 the Department and Public
Health England (since 2013) in partnership with NHS England (including NHS Improving
Quality) and other stakeholders have run national BCOC campaigns for bladder and kidney,
bowel, breast and lung cancers; regional campaigns for ovarian, oesophagogastric cancers,
and local pilot campaigns to raise awareness of four symptoms of unexplained bleeding,
lump, pain, and weight loss; and awareness of skin and prostate cancers.</p><p> </p><p>
</p><p> </p><p>As part of the BCOC campaign process, the Department, Public Health
England, and NHS England have worked with Cancer Research UK and other partners to
develop briefing sheets to support GPs and other healthcare professionals during the
campaigns.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>More generally, to increase awareness of
cancer amongst GPs, the Department supported British Medical Journal (BMJ) Learning
to develop and launch an on-line learning tool for GPs in 2012. The tool offers accredited
professional development and includes four modules - tackling late diagnosis; risk
assessment tools; cancer pathway and the role of primary care; and diagnosing osteosarcoma
and brain tumours in children with an additional section on communication skills.
The tool can be accessed at:</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><a href="http://learning.bmj.com/learning/home.html"
target="_blank">http://learning.bmj.com/learning/home.html</a></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
</p><p>In 2013, Macmillan Cancer Support, partly funded by the Department, piloted
an electronic cancer decision support (CDS) tool for GPs to use in their routine practice.
It is designed to help GPs recognise the symptoms of cancer and identify patients
that they might not otherwise refer urgently for suspected cancer. The CDS covers
lung, colorectal, oesophagogastric, ovarian and pancreatic cancers and a new symptom
checker for melanoma. Following the pilot, Macmillan Cancer Support is able to offer
the tool to GPs.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In addition to this, since 2005, the
Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, published by the National Institute for
Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has supported GPs to identify patients with the
symptoms of suspected cancer and urgently refer them as appropriate. NICE is in the
process of updating this guidance to ensure that it reflects the latest evidence and
the anticipated publication date for the revised guidelines is May 2015.</p><p> </p><p><strong>
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