Peer Review
Background and Context
The National Cancer Peer Review Programme is an integral part of the NHS Cancer Reform Strategy (2007). It will support quality assurance of cancer services and enable quality improvement.
The National Cancer Peer Review Programme, whilst continuing its focus on ensuring the delivery of high quality cancer services, acknowledges the need to change in line with current health policy by supporting the development of leadership, self regulation and governance.
The founding principles of The National Cancer Peer Review Programme are:
- Emphasis on being clinically led
- National consistency in the delivery of the programme
- A developmental approach
- A focus on system and services with and across organisations in a Cancer Network to ensure co-ordination of patient care
- Peer on peer review
- Integration with other review systems
- Patient and carer involvement
The recent development of the revised programme has also focussed on the following principles:
- Greater focus on self assessment and internal quality assurance
- Targeted visit programme
- Better use of resources
- Responsive to NHS changes
- Greater emphasis on outcomes
Aims and Outcomes
The National Cancer Peer Review Programme aims to improve care for people with cancer and their families by:
- Ensuring services are as safe as possible
- Improving the quality and effectiveness of care
- Improving the patient and carer experience
- Undertaking independent, fair reviews of services
- Providing development and learning for all involved
- Encouraging the dissemination of good practice
The outcomes of The National Cancer Peer Review Programme are:
- Confirmation of the quality of cancer services
- Speedy identification of major shortcomings in the quality of cancer services where they occur so that rectification can take place
- Published reports that provide accessible public information about the quality of cancer services
- Timely information for local commissioning as well as for specialised commissioners in the designation of cancer services
- Validated information which is available to other stakeholders
The National Cancer Peer Review Programme should be conducted in the spirit of dialogue and co-operation between the Cancer Network, Trusts, their staff and the Review Teams.
The GMCN Cancer Network has delegated responsibility from the SHA and PCTs to ensure that services are appropriately commissioned and have robust clinical governance processes.
Scope of Peer Review
The process of cancer peer review is concerned not only with the review of an organisation’s compliance against measures, but also with the qualitative assessment of a broad set of objectives for the delivery of services, which will encompass the whole system of quality and safety in relation to patient care and patient & carer experience.
Within the context of the Concordat between bodies inspecting, regulating and auditing healthcare, the National Cancer Peer Review Programme, along with other regulatory bodies, are working with the Care Quality Commission to adopt a more collaborative approach towards the review and inspection process in order to reduce the burden of inspection.