Ardens has created a variety of cancer resources to assist with identifying patients who may have a potential cancer diagnosis, and to support their ongoing management once diagnosed. 

Identifying Patients with a Potential Cancer Diagnosis 

The Ardens resources includes Clinical Safety Alerts to flag in real-time important MHRA drug safety and NICE guidance information that maybe missed. The alerts are triggered on certain activity in the patient record e.g. entering a particular code or prescribing specific drugs. The Cancer alerts will flag potential diagnosis.

The New Diabetes alert will be displayed if you are adding a new diagnosis of diabetes to a patients record and they are over the age of 60, advising the user to consider the possibility of pancreatic cancer.

The Smoking Fatigue alert is triggered when a fatigue code is entered in the patient record, if the patient has previously been coded as a smoker or ex smoker. This alert will remind you of NICE Cancer guidance to consider a chest x-ray.

The Possible Ovarian Cancer alert will display in the pink QOF alert box if a female patient over the age of 50 has a new diagnosis of IBS recorded within the last 3m, but do not have a recording of a Ca125 within the last 6 months.  This alert is triggered either on load or update patient record.

The Breast + Bowel Screening Due Alert will display in the pink QOF alert box if a screening code or declined code is not recorded in the relevant time frame.

If a patients latest platelet count is high, the High Platelets alert will display in the pink QOF alert box suggesting possible neoplasm.

The FIT kit reminder - Suspected Colorectal Referral alert will display in the pink QOF alert box when a colorectal/lower GI 2ww referral is made.

Identifying Incorrect Coding Errors and Missing National Requirements 

The Ardens resources includes Data Quality Alerts to alert practice staff in real time of incorrect coding or missing QOF requirements. These will ensure that you are entering accurate data to include your Cancer patients on the QOF register, whilst also flagging potential diagnosis.

The following QOF alerts will display when you add a consultation or add a malignant neoplastic disease code,  to remind you that the patient needs a review.

Ardens Cancer Symptom Analyser

The Ardens Cancer Symptom Analyser has been designed to support clinicians in identifying whether a patients' symptoms and findings meet the criteria for a referral based on the NICE NG12 Suspected Cancer Guidance.  It consists of a template to record symptoms and findings for the patient, which then generates the recommended guidance based on the information recorded at that time.  Please note, at present this is only available to Resource Publisher sites.

For further information on how this system works, please see the following support article.

Fast Track Safety Netting Resources

The Ardens Fast Track Safety Netting system enables tracking of 2WW referrals, urgent diagnostics and symptom safety-netting. It consists of a clinical template to help record data, alerts for practice staff to track those patients on the safety netting system and searches to monitor patients not seen in a specific time frame.

For further information on how the system works, please see the following support article.

Recording Information on the Management of Cancer Patients

The Ardens Cancer clinical template has been designed to standardise consultations, ensuring clinicians are following the latest national guidelines and recording accurate coding of data. Its helpful for recording the latest QOF requirements and completing a structured Cancer Care Review.

To locate the Ardens Cancer Template, access the relevant patient record. Open a new consultation and select the Run Template option (if not in consultations, click on the Add button on the EMIS ribbon, followed by Data Using Template option).

This will open the Template Picker screen. If you have accessed any templates before, these will display to the left of the screen. Search for the template by typing “cancer” in the search box.

This will return the Cancer NEW (Ardens) template (alternatively select the Ardens > Chronic disease templates folder to the right of the screen).

All the Ardens Chronic Disease Templates follow the latest NICE guidance and best practice information. This template includes a:

• National Contracts page for capturing QOF requirements.
• Clinical Administration page to document emergency contact details, mental capacity, consent to share and performance status.
• Cancer Review @ 3months page to complete a full structured 3-month review.
• Cancer Care Review page to complete a full structured 12-month review.
• Referrals page to document signposting and referrals.
• Resources page providing helpful links to information for patients and professionals.
• Template Info/Learning Points page providing template information and instructions for use, NICE copyright information and links to appraisal toolkits to enable recording of learning.

Information relating to contract requirements, will be displayed in red and/or denoted by an asterix (*).

Within the National Contracts page, if the indicator has NOT been achieved for this financial year, there will be a red cross and red writing will denote action needed.

However, if the indicator has been achieved there will be a green tick and the writing will not longer be red.

Information will be displayed if a time sensitive indicator has not been achieved and the timeframe has now expired. You are still able to enter this data via the relevant review page, however this will not achieve QOF points.

Please note - the above only applies to the National Contracts page, all contract indicators on additional pages will be displayed with red writing whether or not they have been completed.

For patients presenting with multiple long term conditions, you may wish to use the Ardens Multi-Morbidity templates. 

Ardens Cancer Searches 

There are various searches that might be useful to support practices with the care of cancer patients. The Ardens searches can be used to identify outstanding cancer screening work for the Network DES, identifying patients 'missing' from cancer registers, and identifying patients who have previously presented with symptoms that suggest cancer that have not been referred. Useful searches include:

• Time Sensitive QOF Searches – includes searches to identify patients who are eligible for a 3-month discussion or 12-month cancer care review.
• Conditions - Cancer  - includes searches to monitor activity, national screening searches, lung health check searches, fast track audit searches, review searches and possible cancer searches.
• Ardens Case Finders - contains a suite of searches to support practices to improve data quality and ensure QOF payments are correctly calculated for your Cancer patients.  
• Network Contract DES Searches - includes searches to monitor Network DES achievements and to identify outstanding work for Cancer patients.

Recording Care Planning Information for Palliative Care Patients

To support practices in managing palliative care patients, we have designed the Future Planning clinical template to record the appropriate information. The template has been produced in association with the Future Care Planning Project, with information recorded to be available on the patient's Summary Care Record, providing additional consent has been obtained. 

In addition to the clinical template, if the clinician wants to produce a printed version of the care plan for the patient or carer, the Ardens Future Care Plan document template can be launched within the patient record.

For more information please see our dedicated Support Article.

Other Supporting Document Templates

Ardens includes a large number of auto-populating standardised document templates for practices. Some document templates that may be useful for your Cancer patients includes:

• 2ww and fast track leaflets in different languages
• SR1 Doctor’s Report and Claiming fee document
• Future Care Plan document
• Respect Form
• Cremation Form Part 4 and 5
• DNACPR form

To access the Document Templates:

• Within a consultation, select the Documents > Create letter option.
• Outside of a consultation, select the Add > Document > Create letter option.

Further learning - why not access Ardens Academy and enrol on the Cancer module to expand your knowledge.

If you require any further assistance on the process above, please contact Ardens support on: support-emis@ardens.org.uk