To receive Report No.52/2019 from Mr P Gibara, Senior Responsible Officer for Cancer, East Leicestershire and Rutland CCG.

Report No.52/2019 was received from Ms Hannah Hutchinson, Lead Commissioner for Cancer LLR.

Ms Hutchinson, and Dr Hilary Fox, East Leicestershire and Rutland CCG Board GP and Rutland GP, introduced the report the purpose of which was to provide an update as to cancer performance for Leicestershire and Rutland and to highlight work currently being undertaken to improve cancer services for patients.

During discussion the following points were noted:

·         East Leicestershire and Rutland had an excellent one year survival rate for cancer due to early diagnosis.

·         Although there was a time lag to the data, the one year survival rates were the highest they had ever been and were higher than those of comparable areas and national averages.

·         There had been a lot of work done with Cancer patients to find out what they wanted during diagnosis, treatment and afterwards. 

·         The McMillan Hope course which would help residents living with and beyond cancer was being trialled in the region.

·         There was a ‘Let’s Talk About Cancer’ event happening on 13 June 2019 to engage with Rutland residents.

·         In line with national guidance, ELR CCG was trying to make sure that there was a standardised approach to pathways for bowel, prostate and lung cancer and for living with cancer afterwards.

·         Public Health England had determined peers for the ELR CCG in terms of age, ethnicity and other demographics. Although LLR patients were not being seen within the allocated time waits, compared with these 10 other similar areas, ELR CCG was the second best performer.

·         University Hospitals Leicester (UHL) had a conversion rate, ie the number of people seen who did have cancer, of 6-7%. Nationally they wanted this figure to be 3%.

·         ELR CCG had a take up rate of 65% for those invited to bowel cancer screening so more work was being done to increase this rate to the national target of 75%. The new Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) was being rolled out which could be sent to patients in the post and which was 99.7% accurate. The new test was much easier to use than current home testing kits as only 1 stool sample was required instead of 3.

·         A 2 year ELR CCG cancer strategy was being developed which would be aligned to the national long term plan.

·         Currently waiting times were being measured from the point of referral to getting on the pathway rather than taking into account the time period and number of consultations before referral. A national audit supported by Cancer UK was being conducted to examine this issue and the Primary Care networks would be utilised to push more Rutland GPs to sign up to it.

·         GPs were issued with very distinct guidelines for referrals but recently the diagnostic criteria had changed and thresholds had been lowered which would see more people coming through.

·         The CCG tried to link in with research programmes that were going on so that results and findings from research projects and clinical trials could be fed back in.

·         Ms Hutchinson would revise the table shown in 2.3 of the report and add in an extra column to show where LLR was compared to the nationally set targets. The Governance officer would circulate this information to members outside of the meeting.

·         Councillor Walters would send to Members details of the smoking cessation programmes that were commissioned by the Local Authority and Public Health.

·         Members would have preferred that the breach figures shown in Appendix A were given as percentages of the number of referrals.

·         Miss Waller commented that invites and associated documents for screening programmes should be available in large print. This would be fed back to Public Health who were responsible for the programmes.

·         Councillors felt that the cut off age of 70 for breast screening should be extended now that people were living longer. Breast screening was a national programme and not commissioned by the CCG but they would encourage GPs to make people aware that although they were not automatically invited over the age of 70, they could request screening.

RESOLVED:

1.    The Panel NOTED the current cancer performance in Leicestershire and Rutland and the work being done to improve the achievement of the national cancer metrics and cancer care commissioned.

2.    The Panel RECOMMENDED that the Rutland Health and Wellbeing Board follow up on the progress being made on cancer performance.