PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Rowan Wathes AU - Katherine van Ree AU - Gareth Gwynn AU - Phawan Hurhangee AU - Catherine Urch TI - Tracking cancer patients during COVID-19 using structured outcomes and keywords AID - 10.7861/fhj.2020-0110 DP - 2020 Nov 26 TA - Future Healthcare Journal PG - fhj.2020-0110 4099 - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/early/2020/11/26/fhj.2020-0110.short 4100 - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/early/2020/11/26/fhj.2020-0110.full AB - For the duration of COVID-19, cancer pathways will be affected by the significant loss of elective capacity and increased risk of COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality for cancer patients. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT) has developed a simple, effective MDT recording process, using keywords, to support the tracking of patients who require treatment prioritisation, repeated clinical/MDT reviews and/or need adjustments to their treatment. Following implementation in April, the percentage of MDT outcomes with keywords recorded was 79% in June and 77% for the first two weeks of July. Analysis of the 3,680 MDT outcomes with at least one key word recorded showed that 96% had the ‘intention to proceed’ recorded. For 59% patients, the decision was to ‘proceed’, 5% patients are being monitored, 3% patients have been deferred and 29% were ‘closed’. While this process adds time to busy MDTs, we hypothesise that it will support the tracking and safety-netting of thousands of cancer patients whose care has been affected by the pandemic. The process could easily be implemented in other trusts and adapted for other specialties.