Radiation Oncology version 5

GENERAL COMMENTS

A/Prof Jeremy Millar Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists Chair, Quality Improvement Committee, Faculty of Radiation Oncology, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists Chair, ACHS Radiation Oncology Working Party Version 5

The quality indicators reported in this year's Australasian Clinical Indicator Report are positive and reflect well on the participating radiation oncology units. Reported multidisciplinary meeting discussion is higher this year than last year. Overall, almost half of patients are discussed in MDMs (compared with just over 40% last year). Waiting times have improved over the last eight years, albeit probably stabilising over the last few years. There are high rates of appropriate tumour staging. Rates of peerreview of plans have increased over the two years we have data. Rates of hypofractionation for bone metastases are increasing. Motion management is increasingly commonly employed during treatment delivery, and, as suggested by multiple randomised controlled trials, long-term androgen deprivation is increasingly used as an adjunct to radical radiation therapy for localised highrisk prostate cancer.

One clinical indicator in which there nominally seems to have been a deterioration is in treatment prolongation. This is a new indicator, developed for the fifth version of the Radiation Oncology clinical indicator sets. In 2018, 11.2% of patients having radical radiation therapy for a Royal College of Radiologists “category 1” cancer had more than two days prolongation in their prescribed treatment. In 2019, this was 12.8%. This difference is too small to conclude that the proportion of category treatment prolongations is actually worsening (Pearson Chi-square statistic 0.56, p=0.455).

The last two years of data allow us to review the utility of the new clinical indicators in version 5, introduced for use for the first time in 2018. These indicators appear to be useful measures of performance. They are defined based on high-level evidence that they measure something that is related to better patient outcomes. The results we see on average have "face validity”. There is significant variation between reporting institutions, and there would appear to be room for improved performance in them all.

All is not perfect with this data. The number of reporting units is low, compared with the total in Australia. This raises questions as to the generalisability of the observations. These units might be self-selecting centres of relative excellence, where the leadership takes an interest in measuring performance and commits resources to contribute to these benchmarking efforts. There is a ‘chicken-and-egg' aspect to participation in this quality improvement project: more units would see and feel a benefit of participation if more units participated.

This is missing a point, in the end. Clinicians concerned about the quality of the work they do to look after patients need to be motivated. This cannot only be via governments and standards commissions, fear of legal liability, or employer quality officers. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” reminds us: “further improvement of the world will be done by individuals making quality decisions and that's all”. We all have to play our own part, and care about quality. These clinical indicators are a small but important part of the complicated whole.

RADIATION ONCOLOGY

GENERAL COMMENTS

Ms Rachel Kearvell Professional Standards Committee, Australian Society of Medical Imaging and Radiation Therapy Member, ACHS Radiation Oncology Working Party Version 5

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare collate data annually on waiting times from almost all radiation therapy providers in Australia. Intention of treatment is defined in this national minimum dataset as either prophylactic, curative or palliative1. Clinical indicators that align with this nomenclature may be more appropriate as "radical" is an old-fashioned term that nowadays more commonly describes the complexity of a treatment plan as opposed to the intent.

Treatment plan peer review had a low number of HCOs provide data for this clinical indicator (CI). Anecdotally this may be due to the difficulty in retrieving this data from the HCOs' patient information system. If discussion at peer review is not documented in the patient information system in such a way as to enable easy extraction via a query of the database, HCOs may choose to not respond to this CI as to do so is too time consuming. The 2015 consensus guidelines developed by the ANZ Faculty of Radiation Oncology Lung Interest Cooperative (FROLIC) include the use of 4DCT as the preferred method of motion management for non-small cell lung cancer2. A 2016 survey of radiation therapy centres in Australia reported that 97% of respondents used PET images to assist with motion management in treatment planning3 .

Since then, there have been a myriad of papers published extolling the virtue of 4DCT to delineate lung tumour volumes for radiation therapy planning. As a result, the prevalence of 4DCT is becoming increasingly more common among radiation oncology sites across Australia. Mandated use of motion management techniques in clinical trials particularly for stereotactic lung (CHISEL, SAFRON), may have also helped increase the uptake and installation of CT scanners with this functionality. It is therefore pleasing to see that the rate for CI 3.2 Motion management has increased accordingly.

REFERENCES 1. meteor.aihw.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/583857 2. Dwyer, P et al. Australia and New Zealand Faculty of Radiation Oncology Lung Interest Cooperative: 2015 consensus guidelines for the use of advanced technologies in the radiation therapy treatment of locally advanced non‐small cell lung cancer. Journal of Medical Imaging and

Radiation Oncology 60(50 Oct 2016. 3. Batumalai, V et al. Survey of image guided radiation therapy use in Australia. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Oncology 61(3) Nov 2016.

RADIATION ONCOLOGY

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

In 2019 there were 80 submissions from 8 HCOs for 9 CIs. Two were analysed for trend, 1 of which improved, 1 deteriorated. In 2019, significant stratum variation was observed in none of the CIs. Five CIs showed systematic variation, with centile gains in excess of 50% of all events. Outlier gains in excess of 25% of all events were observed in 3 CIs. See Table of Indicator Results below.

Table of Indicator Results

Indicator Aggregate rate %

Consultation process 1.1 Patients for radical treatment - waiting time from the 'ready for care' date more than the faculty guidelines (L) 1.2 Patients for palliative treatment - waiting time from the ‘ready for care’ date more than the faculty guidelines (L) 9.4

11.6

1.3 Multidisciplinary meeting involvement (H) 48.6 Treatment process 2.1 Staging annotation for current radiotherapy course (H) 90.9

2.2 Treatment prolongation (L) 12.8

2.3 Treatment plan peer review (H) 39.5

Treatment delivery 3.1 Single fractionation for bone metastases (H) 43.7

3.2 Motion management (H) 83.7

3.3 Androgen deprivation therapy (H)

# Number of undesirable or non-compliant events + % of events accounted for by outlier/centile gains * % of HCOs that are outliers 81.7

Best Stratum Outlier HCOS (%)* Outlier Gains (%)+ Centile Gains (%)+ Events# Trend

3 (38%) 167 (25%)

4 (50%) 217 (38%) 262 (39%) 675

329 (57%) 575

39 (12%) 323

2 (33%) 87 (24%)

330 (91%) 364 1 (25%) 11 (19%) 36 (61%) 59 22 (18%) 121

40 (33%) 120 1 (17%) 9 (26%) 32 (94%) 34 1 (17%) 10 (36%) 18 (64%) 28