Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care: Primary Care

This paper concerns the integration of primary care into care for all cancers in Europe.

This ERQCC paper address primary care requirements with respect to these questions:

• What type of primary care action/intervention should be available/delivered to cancer patients?
• Which primary care professionals should be involved (roles and responsibilities of professional groups, such as GPs, pharmacists, community nurses and allied health professionals)?
• When and at what stage of the cancer care continuum should primary care actions/interventions should be available (including during treatment)?
• How should an intervention be delivered/made available?
• What is needed from an organisational point of view to deliver these interventions?

The key essential requirement put forward in this paper is that, given that primary care is central to effective health reform, a multiprofessional team of general practitioners, nurses, community pharmacists, carers and other primary or community professionals must be considered as part of the extended multidisciplinary team (MDT) in cancer care pathway planning in all countries.