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Coordination of care

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People diagnosed with cancer will talk to a number of health professionals who play a variety of roles at different times throughout their cancer journey. We are working towards developing a coordinated approach between these specialists to make sure all patients in NSW receive the same high level of care.

Multidisciplinary care

Multidisciplinary care is recognised as an essential element of best practice cancer care in a quality cancer system. Multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings are an important strategy in ensuring the delivery of multidisciplinary, coordinated care for people with cancer. As such, the Cancer Institute NSW continues to take a lead role in supporting the development MDTs across NSW through a number of different grant, project and evaluation activities.

An MDT in cancer care consists of a group of health professionals who come together to provide the best approach to cancer diagnosis, treatment and supportive care for people diagnosed with cancer.

Teams can include a range of cancer health professionals including surgeons, radiation and medical oncologists, nurses, psychologists, social workers, dieticians and others.

MDTs provide a collaborative approach to decision making to ensure that patients receive the most appropriate treatment and supportive care while taking into account individual patient's preferences and circumstances.

In 2011, there were 170 MDTs operating in NSW. The Cancer Institute NSW profiling surveys help us to better understand existing service models and opportunities for further development of MDTs to support system-wide improvements in the delivery of cancer care and services across NSW.

You can search for multidisciplinary teams in NSW on Canrefer

Funding health care professionals in NSW


We also fund 140 key infrastructure positions across NSW cancer services, at a total annual cost of $11 million. Through these positions, which include cancer care coordinators, we aim to improve clinical leadership, coordination of care, multidisciplinary care and patient-centred care.

 

Promoting patient care

Patient care outside of the hospital setting is equally important, and the Cancer Institute NSW continues to strengthen collaborations with the primary and community care sectors, in particular with the newly launched Primary Care and Specialist Shared Care Model Grant, the Primary Care page on eviQ, as well as a suite of Referral Guides.

 







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