We are committed to supporting clinicians during these immensely difficult and challenging times and to ensuring that our patients continue to receive the best possible care without delay. This page has the latest information on how we continue to treat patients, clinical protocols, how you can work with us, frequently asked questions and the lasted clinician updates.
Our specialist cancer centres are open and we are undertaking robust screening and infection control procedures as well as secure video consultations to ensure we are able to maintain the safest possible environment for patients and the staff who care for them. We are also increasing our capacity to support access to diagnostics and some of our advanced technologies such as hypofractionated radiotherapy to minimise treatment times.
We are accepting referrals for chemotherapy and radiotherapy. For patients starting or continuing cancer treatment, each case will be reviewed individually by an eMDT which can also involve the referring clinician.
For more information on how to refer a patient, please contact one of our referrer engagement managers REM@genesiscare.co.uk
Our clinical reference groups have reviewed treatment protocols and techniques against current evidence and the guidelines from the Royal College of Radiologists, ESTRO and other clinical authorities. These have been revised and published for the main tumour types and accessible below.
We appreciate that our surgical and oncology teams will face difficult decisions in the coming days and weeks. We have accelerated the roll-out of our eMDT platform to ensure all best practice protocols are maintained. This system facilitates clinician peer review and combines videoconferencing and data technology to enable remote collaboration in a secure environment that tracks the patient journey.
We are increasing access to our diagnostic services, in particular One Stop Breast Clinics and our rapid access Urology Hubs. We know these services are critical, not only to take pressure off NHS services but also to ensure that patients continue to receive a timely diagnosis. These clinics are running in Maidstone, Milton Keynes and will soon to be operational in Cambridge, Windsor and Portsmouth.
We are always looking to collaborate with talented consultants. We can help you build your private practice with medical secretary support, practice management systems, website and marketing support and free consultation rooms.
We welcome requests from individuals and academic institutions to access our state-of-the-art equipment and clinical support for treatment and research. To find out more about practising privileges or research opportunities, please contact us here REM@genesiscare.co.uk.
GenesisCare has introduced Zoom for use in Telehealth consultations to provide an ongoing service and consultations in a safe environment for all patients and referrers. We have created a Zoom custom configuration to assist in managing your patient consultations by providing a virtual waiting room for patients. Zoom is the same application used for virtual meetings across the business, with a custom configuration applied to your account to assist in managing your patient consultations by providing a virtual waiting room for patients.
Along with recent COVID-19 challenges, the benefits of Telehealth include:
Zoom is widely used, distributed and known within GenesisCare. A single platform for meetings and consults will reduce the confusion of multiple platforms.
Find out more about using zoom for telehealth here.
We are receiving a growing number of enquiries from clinicians and patients directly who are anxious to continue cancer treatment without delay. Typically, our patients are funded through private medical insurance but during this time we have reduced our prices to make it more accessible to those who want to fund the cost of their own treatment.
Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) enables treatment of a number of tumour types using a small number of fractions – five or less. This hypofractionated approach is non-invasive and has obvious benefits in limiting treatment episodes or avoiding surgery. We have significant expertise and capacity across our network to treat lung, pancreas and liver, brain, prostate and oligometastatic disease (all cancers) with SABR. We will be offering these hypofractionated radiotherapy treatments where possible and delaying any chemotherapy that will compromise the patient’s immune system, putting them at higher risk of becoming unwell from respiratory illness. We’re working with some of the country’s leading SABR specialists and we are ready to treat patients alongside our existing cases. We are also treating patients for pancreas and lung on the new MRIdian system in Oxford.
Our clinical reference groups and UK Leadership Team work closely with the NHS, RCR, ESTRO and other surgical and oncology associations to ensure that our revised clinical protocols are aligned with national clinical guidelines.
All patient referrals for new protocols are reviewed by our clinical reference groups and clinical advisory team to ensure compliance with eligibility criteria.
Clinicians should continue to discuss the risk and benefits of having treatment at this time with patients. Informed consent is required and should be clearly noted.
We have prepared a summary of scenarios exploring absolute survival benefit and potential risks in a variety of common chemotherapy. This is available here.
Our clinical reference groups and UK Leadership Team work closely with the NHS, NICE, ESMO and other oncology and haematology associations to ensure that our revised chemotherapy protocols are aligned with national clinical guidelines for solid and haematological malignancies.
We have therefore revised our protocols to include:
At GenesisCare we receive referrals from two main pathways:
We endeavour to treat patients within five to seven days from referral. These timings depend on whether we have all the histology results available for the cancer MDTs to make treatment decisions, otherwise we operate on full workforce capacity in terms of radiotherapy planners, physicists, therapy radiographers and chemotherapy nurses.
Wherever safe to do so, patients will have treatment delayed until after symptoms have resolved and isolation period is over. However, there will be occasions where it is clinically necessary for treatment to continue.
Your patients can access spacer insertions under local anaesthetic at:
Alternatively:
Keep up to date with our latest updates for clinicians. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we aim to keep clinicians up to date on our treatment status, centre preparedness and business continuity plans. Treatment continues as usual and we are prepared to treat all patients without delay. Ensure you filter by clinician news on our news page, providing you with our latest updates:
Across the world, GenesisCare has more than 440 centres, bringing specialist care closer to our patients in the...