By the end of 2024, under the national Healthcare project, more than 550 Outpatient Oncology Care Centers (ACOC) will be opened in the regions. This format allows you to significantly reduce the time between detection of the disease and its treatment, and also increases the efficiency and accessibility of cancer care, ensuring its uniform
standard throughout the country.
Cancer is a diagnosis that about 600 thousand Russians hear every year. Each of us has relatives, acquaintances, and colleagues who have encountered the disease. At the same time, the frequency of detection of cancer in Russia continues to increase: in 2023, this figure increased by 7.6% compared to 2022. These are important numbers, because in 90% of cases, cancer diagnosed in the early stages is treatable.
It is no coincidence that in recent years the focus of attention of both the medical community and relevant ministries has been shifting towards more understandable and accessible medical care, timely diagnosis, prevention and rehabilitation of cancer patients. Ten years ago, having received a referral for a biopsy, the patient had to travel from one end of the city to the other. In the regions, the situation with the availability of cancer care, even at the diagnostic stage, left much to be desired.
Today, the process of providing care to patients with cancer is going through an important stage of modernization at the federal and regional levels. Important tasks include equipping with modern equipment and creating conditions for timely diagnosis and a full cycle of treatment for patients locally. Thus, last year, almost 90 million Russians underwent preventive medical examinations and medical examinations. About 200 oncology centers and oncology departments in the regions received more than 13 thousand units of modern equipment. Good health is a priority of the national project “Healthcare”.
An effective and understandable route for receiving full medical care was created for cancer patients. This is especially important: a person who has been diagnosed with cancer is confused, but he should not give up, understanding the bureaucratic nuances.
These measures made it possible to achieve the highest level of detection of malignant tumors in the early stages – 60% of patients received their diagnosis at stages I-II of the disease, which allows us to count on the most favorable prognosis in treatment.
“Over the past 2 years, mortality from cancer in Russia has been at its lowest level in the last 20 years. A huge contribution to the achievement of this indicator is made by the development of medical technologies. Both the level of oncological surgery and the new possibilities of radiotherapeutic methods and drug therapy are so high that we are increasingly treating people with cancer more effectively. However, the principles of providing oncological care to the population, which have been improved in recent years, cannot be underestimated,” comments Tigran Gevorkyan, Deputy Director of the National Medical Research Center of Oncology named after. N. N. Blokhin of the Russian Ministry of Health for the implementation of federal projects.
According to him, today in three out of five patients cancer is detected at an early stage, which means there is every chance of curing it. It was possible to achieve such indicators, among other things, thanks to the availability of diagnostics.
Single standard
In Russia, special attention is paid to the treatment of cancer. In 2019, the national project “Healthcare” was launched. It includes nine federal projects, one of which is called “Fighting Cancer.”
One of the important achievements of the project was the launch of clear routing for patients and the development of an integrated approach to specialized treatment based on cancer care centers. Such centers have appeared in many regions. Currently there are more than 540 of them. They are created according to a single standard, which allows us to provide patients with the necessary care in full.
“The Outpatient Oncology Care Center is an element of a new organizational model of oncology services in our country, which has made it possible to bring oncology care closer to the person. And since the oncology center carries out not only clinical observation of cancer patients, not only antitumor drug therapy, but also a set of diagnostic measures, this allowed us to make the primary diagnosis of malignant tumors more accessible and faster,” comments Tigran Gevorkyan.
An oncology care center can be organized on the basis of a clinic, a central district hospital, a multifunctional medical center, and sometimes even an oncology clinic. It all depends on the individual characteristics of each region. Thus, in Yalta, an oncology care center was opened at the branch of the Federal Scientific and Clinical Center of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Russia in Crimea. In Samara, the center began operating at the city hospital № 7, in the Arkhangelsk region – at the city clinical hospital № 2 in Severodvinsk. In the Tomsk region and Tyva, oncology centers are opened on the basis of oncology dispensaries. In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, there are more than ten outpatient cancer care centers located at medical organizations in the region.
A patient at the cancer care center is seen by an oncologist, who determines the tactics for diagnosing him.
“This saves a tremendous amount of time and effort. A person does not need to organize examinations for himself – to go to one institution for a CT scan, to another for a gastroscopy or mammography. The doctor writes out the examination plan, and the patient goes through it completely to the oncology center. In this way, we significantly reduce the time between suspicion of cancer and the start of its treatment,” says Tigran Gevorkyan.
Help is at hand
The cancer center forms the primary link in the organization of cancer care. Such centers have modern diagnostic equipment. Here you can do a computed tomography scan, diagnostics for puncture biopsies, mammography, various types of endoscopic examinations, or undergo a course of antitumor drug therapy in a day hospital.
“In cancer care centers, our patients can receive regular treatment with anticancer drugs without having to travel far from home. Nowadays it is much less common to have to go or fly to a regional or federal center in order to receive chemotherapy. This, in turn, relieves the burden on the hospitals of regional oncology centers and federal oncology centers, where doctors can focus on choosing the best treatment tactics for the patient and “schedule” therapy that will be implemented as close as possible to the patient’s place of residence,” comments Tigran Gevorkyan.
This division, according to him, makes it possible to provide quality care to a larger number of patients, and for the patients themselves to undergo treatment comfortably, without wasting energy on overcoming sometimes significant distances.
This proximity of oncological care to the place of residence becomes even more important after the completion of antitumor treatment.
“Patients should be monitored throughout their lives and undergo regular examinations. The ability to carry out instructions of this kind without leaving far from home significantly increases a person’s willingness to take care of their health,” the expert believes.
Oncology service vertical
Reformatting the format of cancer care and modernizing the existing system of outpatient monitoring of patients with cancer diagnosis indicate that social and medical problems accompanying cancer patients are coming to the fore. Attention to them allows us to count on the introduction into practice of regional centers of new technologies that can save lives.
Today, work on “adjusting” the system of oncology centers continues, taking into account the characteristics of certain regions. The goal is to increase the availability of primary diagnosis of tumor diseases and subsequent clinical follow-up.
“One of the achievements of domestic healthcare is the presence of a vertical oncology service itself. What is an oncology service? An extensive network of specialized oncological institutions at different levels interacting at various stages of providing oncological care to patients to achieve the best results in their treatment,” explains Tigran Gevorkyan.
He notes that Cancer Care Centers make it possible to undergo primary diagnostics as quickly and conveniently as possible, then the patient is sent to a regional dispensary, where doctors develop treatment tactics and carry out complex, high-tech treatment in their region.
“If a patient is diagnosed with a rare oncological disease, or complicated by concomitant, sometimes competing diseases, specialized national medical research centers are involved. To receive cyclic treatment, the patient can return to the oncology center, then undergo regular examinations there,” concludes Tigran Gevorkyan.
In fact, cancer care centers are the vanguard of a multi-level system of cancer care, the development of which creates uniform rules for all regions.
