Service Specification and Optimal Pathway

The UK Mesothelioma Alliance in collaboration with the NHS England Lung Cancer Clinical Excellence Group (CEG) set up a Service Specification and Optimal Pathway for Mesothelioma Development Group.

This group included clinicians, specialists, nurses, advocates and representatives from the CEG.  During 2019 they worked on drafting these complex and detailed documents.

In the Autumn of 2019 the UKMA became aware that NHS England were also working on this area by producing Quality Metrics for mesothelioma.

Originally these were to be introduced from April 2020 for implementation and adoption by NHS Specialist Commissioners.

The situation with COVID-19 has meant that the introduction date was delayed as NHS services were focussed on COVID-19.

NHS England has now published a Specialised Services Quality Dashboard (SSQD) for mesothelioma.

“These Specialised Services Quality Dashboards (SSQD) are designed to provide assurance on the quality of care by collecting information about outcomes from healthcare providers. SSQDs are a key tool in monitoring the quality of services, enabling comparison between service providers and supporting improvements over time in the outcomes of services commissioned by NHS England.”

All NHSE SSQDs can be found here https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/spec-dashboards/.

The specific mesothelioma SSQD is updated each year, for 2022/2023, it can be found here:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Cancer-Malignant-Mesothelioma-Adult.pdf