Cancer: Older People

(asked on 26th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing an indicator measuring mortality rates of over-75s from cancer in the NHS Outcomes Framework; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 3rd December 2014

The existing indicators in the NHS Outcomes Framework (NHS OF) are based on under 75 mortality for technical reasons, as attribution of cause of death is more complicated for older people, who often have multiple co-morbidities. Consequently, there is a lack of cause-specific robust indicators for the over 75s. For that reason Life Expectancy at 75 was adopted as the over-arching indicator for that age group in domain 1 of the NHS OF. Consequently all age groups are covered equally by Domain 1 in the NHS OF.

The NHS OF is subject to ongoing review by the Department, along with NHS England and other partners. As part of that ongoing process we will continue to explore whether there are additional ways of reflecting inequalities in outcomes for older people.

Reticulating Splines