Southlanders are worried that cancer care hasn’t made it onto the Ministry of Health's new list of priorities. This comes after the Cancer Society raised concerns that the ministry's 12- point Health System Indicators framework, launched earlier this month to replace national health targets, did not include cancer indicators – making the group worry that cancer care wasn’t being prioritised. Measuring cancer care performance by district health boards was important to address “the inequities in cancer outcomes – which Southlanders will know well,” Elwood said. Improving cancer care would have spill-over benefits for the rest of the health system, she said, but data collected by the Cancer Control Agency showed cancer survival rates were not improving. Data was critical to understand where the problems in cancer care were and how to fix them, he said.

Source: Stuff August 16, 2021 04:18 UTC