Abstract
Quality of healthcare is a hot topic and this is especially true for cancer care.
New surgical techniques and effective neoadjuvant treatment regimens have significantly
improved colorectal cancer outcome. Nevertheless, there seem to be substantial differences
in quality of care between European countries, hospitals and doctors. To reduce hospital
variation, most initiatives aim on selective referral, encouraging patients to seek
care in high-volume hospitals, where cancer care is concentrated to site-specialist
multidisciplinary teams. As an alternative to volume-based referral, hospitals and
surgeons can also improve their results by learning from their own outcome statistics
and those from colleagues treating a similar patient group. European national audit
registries in surgical oncology have led to improvements with a greater impact on
survival than any of the adjuvant therapies currently under study. Moreover, they
offer the possibility to perform research on patient groups that are usually excluded
from clinical trials.
Nevertheless, between European countries remain differences in outcome and treatment
schedules that cannot be easily explained. The European CanCer Organisation (ECCO)
has recognised these importances and created the ‘European Registration of Cancer
Care’ (EURECCA) framework to develop a European colorectal audit structure. EURECCA
will advance future treatment improvements and spread these to all European cancer
patients. It provides opportunities to treat elderly and comorbid patients evidence
based while it offers an unique insight in social-economical healthcare matters such
as the consequences of commercialisation, treatment availability and screening initiatives.
As such, ECCO has established the basis for a strong, multidisciplinary audit structure
with the commitment to improve cancer care for every European cancer patient.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
June 10,
2010
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
