What we are doing
The Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP) brought together multidisciplinary healthcare teams from different NHS trusts to share best practice in diagnosing, treating and supporting patients with lung cancer, to ensure improvements in survival and quality of life.
ILCOP drew on data from the National Lung Cancer Audit to identify variations in performance by NHS trusts in delivering lung cancer care. Lung cancer is the commonest cause of cancer death in the western world with around 38,500 people being diagnosed in the UK each year. Long term survival rates for lung cancer patients are generally poor, but there are also wide variations in treatment patterns and survival across the UK. ILCOP's aim was to support multidisciplinary teams to consistently improve standards of care and therefore improve patient outcomes, both in terms of clinical measures and the patient experience.
ILCOP objectives:
- To identify the reasons for variations in lung cancer outcomes
- To apply proven quality improvement methods to target specific problems
- To collect patient experience data
- To assess the impact of the changes