Report on the Pilot Certifications of Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks (CCCN)

Key Contextual Factors

• Poland: Lower Silesian Oncology Centre (LSOC), Wroclaw. One main hospital site treating only oncological patients in a network with other hospitals and referring physicians; LSOC is the largest provider of oncological care in the region. The CCCN concept was implemented in an environment without prior certification experience.
• Germany: Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Berlin; three university hospital sites treating patients with all diagnoses. Integrated into a network with other hospitals and referring physicians. The CCCN concept was implemented in an environment with experience in the certification of oncological care structures.

Key Components/Steps

• The tools developed in iPAAC (see previous section) were used over the course of the project to establish a CCCN with a focus on colorectal and pancreatic cancer.
• The implementation has been supported by WP 10 from the beginning with webinars, on-site workshops, Q&As and exchange formats between the pilot CCCNs.
• In Poland, an on-site audit was conducted after an on-site pre-audit. In Germany, due to the COVID pandemic, a video-based audit with on-site sampling of documents was performed.
• Both CCCNs were certified successfully.

Main Impacts / Added Value

• With the help of the tools developed in iPAAC WP10, it was possible.
  • In Poland to establish a CCCN of treating physicians with a focus on colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer. A key step was the designation of the steering committee involving the main network partners, like physicians or patient representatives. Cooperation in tumour conferences and between the specialist disciplines (including pathology and radiology), with referring physicians and other hospitals, and with patient representatives were initiated or improved. The tumour documentation for recording treatment results and the quality indicators as well as the patient pathways were newly implemented.
  • In Germany, the existing network structures were expanded with the elements of the European standard and the quality indicators and patient pathways were implemented.
  • For both countries, the European cooperation and exchange on the CCCN concept has added value to their own work.

Lessons Learned

For the implementation of the CCCN concept it is of central importance that: 

• at the start, a meeting is held with all main cooperation partners to jointly define the goals to be achieved and to present the instruments to be used for this purpose (set of standards, quality indicators, patient pathways);
• that a person is appointed at the beginning (coordinator) who is responsible for the process of implementation. This person must lead the communication with all partners of the network, bring them together and realize the implementation of the formats (see above);
• that there is a continuous support of the implementation process (e.g. with webinars and workshops) by the responsible persons (here: WP 10) to answer emerging questions and find solutions. These support concepts should be further developed and standardized in subsequent projects (JA CraNE);
• the exchange between different Member States and CCCNs that are more advanced in the implementation process and CCCNs that are in the initial phase resulted in a considerable advantage for a learning process in both directions.

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