Welcome to the Cancer Screening Community of Practice

Did you know iFOBT bowel screening kits can be ordered in bulk via the National Cancer Screening Register: Healthcare Provider Portal?

The National Bowel Screening Program now operates under two models to help increase bowel screening participation through:

1. Kits are mailed directly to eligible participants by the National Cancer Screening Register

2. Kits can be provided directly to eligible participants by their healthcare provider under the Alternative Access to Bowel Screening Kit Program

Under this Program your General Practice can order 30 kits by provider or up to 100 kits through the Healthcare Provider Portal. Please note this cannot be done through clinical software. If your General Practice would like to order more than 100 kits you will need to contact the National Cancer Screening Register on 1800 627 701.

For further information visit: Alternative access to bowel screening kits guide | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care

Do you need assistance in accessing the National Cancer Screening Register?

View the PHN Quick Access Guides in the "Resource" section, speak to your Primary Care Improvement Officer or visit https://www.ncsr.gov.au/

Are you up to date with the changes to the cervical screening guidelines, specifically self-collection eligibility and the intermediate risk pathway?

If not or you would like further information, please watch our education session presented by Denise Lyons and Dr Sally Sweeney which discusses:

• self-collection eligibility policy changes and self-collection exclusions according to National clinical guidelines
• appropriate referral pathways including when participants should be referred on to specialists
• changes made to the intermediate risk clinical pathway in February 2021 including changes to referral recommendations

From 1 November 2022, NCSP MBS items 73072 and 73074 will be amended to expand access to self-collected vaginal Cervical Screening Tests under the NCSP. To avoid duplication with amended item 73072, MBS item 73073 will be deleted from 1 November 2022.

These changes are being made to support the management of immunocompromised patients, patients undergoing their recommended follow up tests and patients exiting the NCSP following hysterectomy through the NCSP Clinical Guidelines recommended screening pathways.

For further information view: MBS Factsheet: changes to NCSP MBS Items

Do you have a Registered Midwife currently working in your practice? Would they like the opportunity to offer cervical screening services to your patients?

Family Planning NSW in conjunction with the Cancer Insititute NSW are offering funded positions for midwives working in NSW.

The blended training course comprises of online learning and practice led by Family Planning NSW clinicians. This includes:

• updates on the National Cervical Screening Guidelines,
• Human papilloma virus and cervical cancer
• communication and history taking skills
• case studies
• taking samples
• practice cervical screening on pelvic models and
• simulated practice on practice patients

For further information and to register visit: Cervical Screening Training for Midwives | Family Planning NSW (fpnsw.org.au)

Breast Cancer Awareness Month provides a timely reminder of the importance of routine breast screening and breast awareness in women aged 50 - 74 yrs.

During the month of October (and every month) consider undertaking the following activities to endorse the National Breast Screening Program in your practice:

• Order the BreastScreen NSW request pad which can be used to recommend breast screening to your patients. Although a referral is not required, research shows that GPs have a significant influence on a patients decision to screen.
• Download, print or request Breast Screen NSW suite of brochures, posters and other printed materials to display in your waiting room, bathrooms and consult rooms.
• You can use the online BreastScreen Directory to find the nearest screening centre to your practice and promote within your reminder system, on-hold phone message, opportunistically during consults and in your waiting room.

Within the resource section, there are numerous resources to support you and your practice focus on breast screening as a continuous quality improvement activity. If this is something you are interested in, please contact your Primary Care Improvement Officer.

The National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR) is a fabulous tool to provide you direct real-time online access to your patients cervical and bowel cancer screening history.

Below are some tips to assist you seamlessly access the NCSR:

1.The Register is located outside of Health Professional Online Service (HPOS) tile ie is not an option under “My Programs”. The NSCR tile is located under "Available services" on the PRODA home page.

2. HPOS and NSCR delegation are two separate processes for nurse and non-clinical staff. To access the Register via the Healthcare Provider Portal, nurse and non-clinical staff will need to request delegation via the NCSR tile.

3.Once you have gained access and have logged in to the Register via the Healthcare Provider Portal there is no functionality to go “back” and access other services under PRODA such as HPOS. Do to so, you will need to log out of Healthcare Provider Portal and log back into PRODA to access other services.

5. Consider setting up access to the Register via the Healthcare Provider Portal prior to integrating software. NSCR integration is a complex process involving your IT provider. By accessing the Register via the Healthcare Provider Portal initially allows your team to access patient screening history and information while the software integration process occurs.

4. The NSCR software integration process and initial registration needs to occur be done under the organisations PRODA not your practice Responsible Officer (RO) PRODA.

5. Patient screening history results which are accessible via both the Healthcare Provider Portal and NCSR software integration are in PDF format. To save screening history results in a patients electronic medical record, results will need to be downloaded onto your desktop or folder and imported into your GPs pathology inbox to be reviewed and saved correctly against the patients file.

For further information to support you access the NSCR, please view the PHN National Cancer Screening Register User Access Guide in the resource section or speak with your Primary Care Improvement Officer.

September is Prostate Cancer Awareness month and prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in Australia – overtaking breast cancer.

66 men daily are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Australia

The NSW Prostate Clinical Cancer Registry is a population based clinical register that gathers information to understand an improve treatment, care and health outcomes for men with prostate cancer.

Data collected will help:

- increase the use of best practice-based guidelines,

- assess patterns of care,

- reduce variation in treatments and outcomes and

- provide patients information on the risks and benefits of prostate cancer treatment.

For further information visit: NSW Prostate Clinical Cancer Registry | Cancer Institute NSW

For further information regarding patient resources and health professional resources including clinical guidelines and PSA testing visit: Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia | PCFA

Self-collection must be ordered and overseen by a healthcare provider who can also ensure timely clinician collected testing if required as part of follow-up assessment.

Further to this, and in consultation with the National Cervical Screening Program:

“Anyone who is trained to provide a clinician collected Cervical Screening Test can offer self-collection. This means doctors plus any nurses who have been trained to do so for example Women’s Health Nurses and any Practice Nurses who’ve done the Family Planning NSW training (eg Well Womens Screening Course)”

The National Cervical Screening Program have updated the suite of Resources for Healthcare Providers, available here: Resources for healthcare providers – National Cervical Screening Program | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care

Please refer to HealthPathways for further information, clinical guidelines and referral pathways:

Cervical Screening - Community HealthPathways Hunter New England

Cervical Screening - Community HealthPathways Central Coast

The PHN excited to host an online event focusing on the July 2022 changes to the National Cervical Screening Program, specifically the expansion to Cervical Screening Test sample collection options. These changes now allow all people with a cervix who are eligible to participate in cervical screening, the option of clinician collected or self-collected cervical screening.

Expanding the option of self-collection to all participants is hoped to be a game changer in cervical cancer elimination, improve access to screening, and close the screening gap for under-screened and never screened people.

This event will focus on:

• self-collection eligibility policy changes from 1 July 2022 and discuss self-collection exclusions according to National clinical guidelines,
• utilising appropriate referral pathways including when participants should be referred onto specialists and
• discuss what changes were made to the intermediate risk clinical pathway in February 2021 including changes to referral recommendations.

DATE & TIME

Tuesday 11 October 2022 / 6:30pm - 8:00pm

OUR PRESENTERS

Dr Sally Sweeney, Conjoint Senior Lecturer University of Newcastle and General Practitioner, Elermore Vale General Practice and Family Planning NSW

Denise Lyons, Nurse Practitioner, Kotara Family Practice and PHN HealthPathways Clinical Editor

TO REGISTER PLEASE CLICK HERE

Today marks the beginning of Multicultural Health Week!

This week is an opportunity to raise awareness of health issues experienced by culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This year’s theme is Cancer Screening, with a focus on the three National Cancer Screening Programs.

Here are some facts:

• Women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities have lower participation rates in BreastScreen NSW than the general population.⁴
• In 2020–to21, 43% of eligible women in NSW were screened for breast cancer. This figure is 8 percentage points lower for culturally and linguistically diverse women.⁵
• Australians who spoke a language other than English at home had a lower bowel screening participation rate than those who spoke English at 25–to34% compared to 45–to49%, respectively.⁶

GPs play a significant role in improving screening rates in culturally and linguistically diverse communities as you are seen as trusted sources of health information by community members, especially newly arrived refugee communities.

Cancer Institute NSW has produced factsheets in 38 languages with key messages on the national cancer screening programs. This information can be downloaded as factsheets or as audio files here: Cancer Screening Resources by Language – MHW 2022 (multiculturalhealthweek.com)