Hospital differences in patient satisfaction with care for breast, colorectal, lung and prostate cancers.

Background: We have investigated cancer patient satisfaction with care and the extent to which it varies between and within hospitals.

Design And Methods: A national survey of cancer patients in England with questions in 10 different dimensions for four common cancers: breast, colorectal, lung and prostate (55,674 patients). We compared hospitals across tumour types, and against the national average.

Is the performance of cancer services influenced more by hospital factors or by specialization?

The Cancer Plan for England, introduced in 2000, has promoted cancer service specialization. We have investigated how far specialization and general hospital factors each contributed to service performance for four common cancers-breast, colorectal, lung and prostate-at the time of the Cancer Plan. Performance measures of service standards, waiting time to treatment, satisfaction with care, in-hospital mortality and population-level survival were identified from secondary data sets for 167 acute hospitals and 34 cancer networks in England.