Within its effort to reduce inequalities in cancer care, European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC) found in the Organisation of European Cancer Institutes (OECI) a precious ally.

In 2013 a cooperation initiative was established, aiming at identifying possible solutions to the unacceptable inequalities in cancer care among Member States and at cooperating in EU research projects.

As part of Bench-Can Project, the ECPC accepted to take an active role participating to the Pilot Sites’ visits and the cooperation between the two Organisations become dynamic and effective.

The Bench-Can partners discussed and drafted the tools, including processes and outcomes indicators, to be employed in the Pilot Sites.

The draft version has been then validated enabling the benchmarking group to effectively compare the Pilot Sites, in order to peer review the benchmarking exercise and to identify areas for improvement in quality of care and patients’ outcomes.

The Comprehensive Cancer Centres participating to the piloting phase involve patients and carers in the benchmarking process, providing information and assessing performances on the basis of their experience.

In this framework, ECPC Audit Committee Member, Dr Pietro Presti, collaborates to guarantee that the voice of patients is heard and to ensure that they have timely and affordable access to the best treatments and care.

Before the on-site visits took place, Dr Presti attended a preparatory meeting in Amsterdam on October 6th 2014.

The meeting aimed at preparing the benchmarking group to the visits to the Pilot Sites, harmonising common objectives and methodology and defining the evaluation of results.

OECI auditors also participated to the site visits, providing their experience based on the OECI Accreditation and Designation audit process and suggesting recommendation for the on-site visits.

“This experience is a true turning point, for me as a healthcare professional, but mostly for cancer patients’ representativeness” said Dr Presti, providing his account on Bench-Can.

“It is invaluable to compare our work with the best practices of some of Europe’s best oncology institutes. Through Bench-Can, we can harmonise oncology healthcare practices, but also harmonise patients’ advocacy capacity”.

Dr Presti’s evaluation on the on-site visits performed so far is very positive: “The visits performed so far allowed me to get in contact with several cancer patients organisations and to understand their strengths and needs. I will bring this precious information back to ECPC, where we will work to achieve a truly pan-European patient-centric cancer care model, based also on the results of Bench-Can”. 

The goal of the Bench-Can Project is not to rank cancer centres, but to benchmark best practices and identify examples of excellence that will contribute to reduce inequalities in cancer care in EU.

Thanks to the ECPC collaboration, the Bench-Can Project has the needed expert support to guide the centeredness of the patients across all pilot sites.

Click here for the latest on the BenchCan project.

Source: OECI