Impacts of the VICS Optimal Care Summits

Recommendations from past VICS Optimal Care Summits consultations, implemented across Victoria with the support of the VICS, have improved experiences and outcomes for people affected by cancer.

Initiatives driven or informed by recommendations from our summits include:

• Pancare Foundation, through their involvement in our 2024 consultation on oesophagogastric cancer, recognised low support for patients’ dietary needs emerged as a key concern and subsequently secured Federal funding to develop an ‘Upper GI Cancer Diet Information Hub’. This online hub will provide evidence-based dietary resources for patients. The VICS will contribute to the project as part of its advisory committee
• We’ve helped Victorian public health services secure new cancer nurse coordinator resources: With data on unwarranted variations and advice from the VICS, many of our member health services have successfully applied for inclusion in the McGrath Foundation’s national Cancer Care Nurse Service
• ANZGOG’s 2025 State of the Nation: Uterine Cancers report (PDF) used data, reports, and interviews from the VICS’ 2024 consultation on endometrial cancer care (pp. 14, 50, 54)
• Submission in support of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia’s application to add POLE (polymerase epsilon) mutation genetic testing to the Medicare benefits schedule
• Data and insights supporting Cancer Australia to update the national Optimal Care Pathways (OCPs) for oesophagogastric cancer, endometrial cancer, and colorectal cancer
• Analysis of Victorian data from a national survey of oncology physiotherapy services, for an internal report to guide service improvements at VICS member health services
• Development of the Victorian cancer multidisciplinary meeting (MDM) quality framework in 2018 and a statewide audit in 2019 against the framework’s standards
• Establishment of the Victorian Head and Neck Cancer Education and Support Group by WCMICS in 2019, prompted by our first head and neck cancer summit in Oct. 2018.
• Implementation of the Optimal Care Pathway for Colorectal Cancer in Victoria
• The Victorian Lung Cancer Service Redesign Program to help hospitals improve timeliness of lung cancer care from referral to the start of treatment
• Suite of Individualised Patient Information (SIPI) resources for lung cancer and colorectal cancer patients, followed by the wider My Cancer Diagnosis Explained series
• Improved participation in the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry – Victoria (PCOR-Vic), from around 66% in 2016 before our prostate cancer summit to 90% in 2019
• Improved implementation of NHMRC guidelines for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, resulting in a rise in Victorian diagnoses from around 4000 in 2014 to around 6000 in 2019
• Further improvements in pancreatic care from 2016 to 2019, including an appropriate shift in chemotherapy administration towards neoadjuvant timing with increasing use of fluorouracil (5FU)-based regimens, as reported in ANZ J Surg. 2023 May 23
• The 2018 Victorian Oesophagogastric Cancer Service Redesign program, which helped health services improve timeliness of care and rates of presentation at MDMs
• A VICS scoping project to understand current practices in palliative care referral and advance care planning in Victoria, resulting in 18 recommendations to address variations in the timing of access to care, collection and storage of data, and more
• A statewide collaboration between the VICS and the Victorian Cancer Registry to improve capture of cancer staging information in MDMs.
• A pilot project led by A/Prof. Charles Pilgrim (co-chair of both pancreatic cancer summits to date) and supported by the VICS, to adopt an international protocol for how pancreatic cancer is defined in computed tomography (CT) reports in Victorian health services – Following a successful pilot in two Melbourne hospitals throughout 2020 and 2021, a grant was awarded under the Medical Research Future Fund to further test and roll out the new CT report template at 40 pancreatic cancer treatment centres across Australia.
• A virtual tour of Bendigo Regional Cancer Centre was developed in response to a consumer recommendation from our 2021 breast cancer summit – specifically, to improve consistency of information provided to patients at diagnosis and during treatment, and how it is presented. The tour video was developed in collaboration with consumers, health professionals, and our Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Service (LMICS).