Identifying patients with cancer
4.4 The average General Practitioner will see only eight or nine new cases of cancer a year.
They may only see patients with rare cancers once in their working lives. But several hundred patients may go to see their GP each year with symptoms that could potentially be due to cancer. Earlier this year the Department of Health published Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer. The guidelines will help GPs to identify those patients who are most likely to have cancer and who therefore require urgent assessment by a specialist.
4.5 Primary care pilot sites are being identified to evaluate the use of electronically generated and despatched cancer referral proformas.
