Homerton's Urgent Suspected Cancer Referral Toolkit
Homerton’s new Urgent Suspected Cancer (USC) toolkit for GPs in City and Hackney is available via this SharePoint webpage.
Access is only available to GPs and Primary Care Staff with an 'nhs.net' email address.
This toolkit is designed to help improve referral efficiency and to support conversations with patients in primary care so that they can prepare for their appointments and know what to expect.
What does the toolkit include?
Read Me First document – guidance about the toolkit
Referrals Matrix – useful information about local referral pathways for the main nine tumour sites: procedures, tests, things we tell the patient or need to know in advance, and any other useful information. Here, we highlight local arrangements that are important to the specialties.
- For example, for colorectal we ask for blood test results to be in before the first appointment
- for lung cancer we do not need a blood test but would like all referrals to include a CT scan.
Appointment Letters – the standard appointment letter templates are provided. The Referrals Matrix gives the tailored parts of letters for each tumour site (e.g. timings and preparations)
Patient Information PDF – this is a PDF version of our website describing all about urgent suspected cancer appointments. We have designed this for patients who prefer to read a leaflet rather than reading a webpage.
Process Maps – this is a suite of process maps, describing steps at different entry points to the USC pathway from primary to secondary care, including less regular routes, such as after advice and guidance, and if abnormalities are spotted on a routine scan.
Resources for Primary Care
Click on each title to access the resource.
For more information
There will be regular updates to the toolkit, so please access the toolkit via SharePoint each time rather than downloading and saving local copies.
If you have any feedback or questions, please email elizabeth.crisp1@nhs.net so that we can continuously improve the toolkit.