The National Lung Cancer Screening Program rolls out on 1 July. The Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance is helping ensure Victoria’s healthcare workforce is ready.
Cancer surgeon A/Prof Gavin Wright is enthusiastic about the start of Australia’s National Lung Cancer Screening Program. But he’s also cautious – the potential increase in workload for healthcare workers is uncertain, and its impactis unclear.
This is what the VCCC Alliance’s upcoming Lung Cancer Screening Symposium on May 23 is designed to tackle. The event is one spoke in a much broader wheel involving multiple organisations, readying Victoria’s healthcare workforce for the change.
“It’s a think tank and a symposium all in one to help Victoria cope with the new challenges,” said A/Prof Wright, Director of Surgical Oncology at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne.
“We’re hoping a bit of planning, including events like this symposium, will alert health jurisdictions to the fact this is coming,” he said.
“It won’t be a tsunami, but it could be a wave, or a king tide. But you can’t wait until it hits, that’s why we start planning now to prepare for extra work when it arrives,” said A/Prof Wright, who is also Lung Cancer and Lung Cancer Screening Lead at VCCC Alliance – an 11-member organisation comprising Victoria’s leading academic, healthcare and research institutes.
The Australian Government in May 2023 announced a $260 million investment in a new National Lung Cancer Screening Program to begin in July 2025. At the time, A/Prof Wright said the program would reduce lung cancer deaths by 25 per cent.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in Australia, with the number of new cases diagnosed continuing to increase year by year. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities carry a much higher burden when it comes to smoking and cancer rates and are three times as likely to develop and die from lung cancer than non-Indigenous Australians, according to Cancer Council Victoria data.
A/Prof Wright is keen to emphasise that the program will not be publicly advertised until July 1 and that events at this time are to prepare the healthcare workforce.
He says a key factor the program needs to get right is the balance between screening targeted individuals, detecting asymptomatic cancers, and doing no harm to those who don’t require interventions like biopsies – which can be particularly invasive when it comes to lung cancer, more costly to the healthcare sector, and carry additional financial, personal and emotional burdens for those affected.
“We don’t want unnecessary costs and harm to patients. At the moment, we’re very reactive. We find cancers by chance, and then we react, whereas this program is actively looking for cancers but trying to make sure we avoid medical interventions for people who don’t have cancer.
“Ten per cent of patients may have something in their lung, maybe only one in 10 of those will be cancer. So we’ve got very tight protocols, and these will be discussed at the meeting.”
The symposium includes a session featuring radiologists to discuss these criteria.
People with a lived experience of cancer are featured as speakers, which is considered the gold standard when discussing and making decisions around medical research and care. The inclusion of healthcare consumers is championed by the VCCC Alliance, not only through event participation but also embedded as a practice across the whole organisation.
Source: VCCC Alliance