Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care
The quality of cancer care makes a huge difference to patients and their families. It is multidisciplinarity that ensures that there is real teamwork between the healthcare professionals involved in patient care. We have developed a series of papers that advocate for the highest quality standards.
The Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care (ERQCC) papers are organisational specifications, not clinical guidelines, and are intended to give oncology teams, patients, policymakers and managers an overview of the elements needed in any healthcare system to provide high-quality care throughout the patient journey. References are made to clinical guidelines and other resources where appropriate, and the focus is on care in Europe.
Written by European experts representing all disciplines involved in cancer care, including our Member Societies, the ERQCC papers provide roadmaps to high-quality multidisciplinary cancer care for a specific tumour type.
Three Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care papers scheduled next to be published:
- Ovarian Cancer
Aims of the programme
- Improve outcomes for cancer patients in Europe through the adoption and the implementation of essential requirements for quality cancer care in Europe
- Complement existing clinical guidelines and improve their efficacy
- Shape the policy environment at European and national levels to improve quality of cancer care across Europe and decrease inequalities in cancer outcomes
The Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care (ERQCC) papers are authored via a collaborative process involving outreach to, and contributions from the European Cancer Organisation's Member Societies, Patient Advisory Committee and partnering societies. At initiation, a call for experts to join bespoke tumour-specific working groups is issued, following which a structured process of face-to-face meetings and virtual exchange leads to general agreement at the level of the participating experts and their societies. After a six month systematic review process and with the support of medical writing expertise, the final consensus based manuscript is published in a peer reviewed journal.
