Our audits don’t just examine data about the cancers themselves, they also look at different hospitals and different methods of treatment. This means NATCAN can focus on how cancer care varies from one hospital to another, with the aim of learning lessons and identifying how we can fight different cancers most effectively.
We make recommendations to hospitals based on our findings, which include:
- How patients are diagnosed
- The treatments patients receive such as the use of surgery, radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy
- Outcomes following treatment
To make fair comparisons, we also take account of the facts that all patients are different and have different characteristics. Among the factors we consider are age, whether a patient has pre-existing conditions, and the social or economic circumstances that patients find themselves in. When the data tells us where improvements are needed, NATCAN can lead the drive to deliver change.