Issue - meetings

FORECAST DEMAND FOR CHEMOTHERAPY

Meeting: 15/10/2019 - Joint Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee (Item 14)

14 FORECAST DEMAND FOR CHEMOTHERAPY pdf icon PDF 150 KB

Report and data from Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHSD Trust attached.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The cancer and clinical support divisional manager stated that the view of clinicians was that demand for chemotherapy would fall over the next 10 years as advances in technology and medical options would mean that surgery or radiotherapy would be the more common options for the first line of cancer treatment.

 

There was a very good radiotherapy service at BHRUT with two new machines having been recently introduced. It was felt that any growth in demand for chemotherapy services up to 4-6% per year could be accommodated in the existing chemotherapy unit and also by increasing the proportion of chemotherapy delivered at home.

 

Members remained unclear however how the Trust would meet the increase in demand for chemotherapy which it had previously stated would be some 80% over the next 10 years. The Committee was not convinced that this could be done using the existing Sunflowers Suite at Queens Hospital nor that the fall in demand for chemotherapy predicted by the Trust would happen in reality. It was also felt that the responses by the Trust were too vague with no clear statement of the methodology used to forecast chemotherapy demand.

 

It was agree that a separate meeting be arranged for a representative group of the Joint Committee to discuss these matters in ore detail with appropriate BHRUT officers.