Relieving pressure on acute care

In the UK, cancer numbers are growing each year placing an increasing pressure on the capacity of inpatient wards and on NHS financial budgets. The latest published figures from Cancer Research UK show that in 2011 331,487 people in the UK were diagnosed with cancer. This equates to around 524 cases for every 100,000 people, or around 910 people every day. In the last decade, in the UK, there have been large increases in the incidence of potentially avoidable cancers, such as kidney, liver, malignant melanoma, oral and womb cancers. 

Cancer survival in the UK has improved significantly – 50% of adult cancer patients diagnosed in 2010 to 2011 in England and Wales are predicted to survive ten or more years.¹ According to Macmillan Cancer Support,² two million people in the UK had a cancer diagnosis in 2010. If this number continues to rise by over 3% a year, this could see four million people living with cancer by 2030. The proportion of people living longer after cancer will increase, and the number of people alive and more than five years from initial diagnosis will more than double to 2.7 million in 2030.³ 

There has been particular pressure on hospital bed days, as traditionally patients receive chemotherapy as an inpatient. Other factors affecting service delivery have included a national drive to improve patient experience (Department of Health [DH], 2011) and technological advances. Together, these factors have prompted a shift in the location of treatment delivery from an inpatient to an outpatient facility (Matziou et al, 2012⁴; Sive et al, 2012⁵).