Assessing cancer care quality in OECD countries

As the disease burden of cancer increases in OECD countries, so too does the economic and social burden on health systems. Better internationally comparable indicators are required to measure and report the quality of cancer care delivered by health systems in order to assess current practices and inform future cancer care policy. This paper details the OECD pilot data collection and development of six indicators across three key domains of cancer care: access and timeliness, quality of care, and patient centeredness. It reports findings from 18 OECD countries participating in the pilot, enabling assessment and benchmarking of performance against the OECD average in quality of cancer care. The recommendations for health policymakers include recognising the essential role of cancer registries and data linkages for cancer care monitoring, refinement and adoption of the pilot indicator definitions and development of future indicators.