Learning what high quality compassionate care means for cancer patients and translating that into practice

In 2010, UCLPartners, a partnership of health care providers and universities in North Central London, began a collaboration with local commissioners that aimed to think about cancer care and diagnosis differently. Understanding that a good patient experience can only be delivered by putting patients first and working together along their journey from symptoms to recovery, we brought clinical leaders together with patients to think about how to improve outcomes for patients, outside institutional barriers. From the very beginning this new network, an integrated cancer system, focused on understanding what mattered most to patients and organising how it worked and how it measured success around this. Co-designed by conversations and with contributions from over 1,000 clinicians and over 200 patients, London Cancer’s ten things that matter most to patients are embedded throughout the continuing work of this organisation. In this article our work to develop these ten topics is described alongside how we used this to create a truly patient centred integrated cancer system for a population of 3.5 million people in London and Essex