CUSTOMER STORY

SAS helps Cancer Care Ontario

®

improve quality of patient care

Cancer Care Ontario’s (CCO) mandate is to continually improve cancer services, reduce the
number of people diagnosed with cancer and ensure that patients receive quality care on every
step of their journey. With multiple standalone information sources across the province, CCO
needed a clearer picture of patient care. As part of its information delivery environment, CCO
uses SAS software to consolidate data from these sources to help them understand service
requirements across the entire cancer care system – now and in the future.
Graham Woodward, Director of Provincial Planning

■ Industry
Healthcare Providers
■ Business Issue
With multiple standalone informa-
tion sources across the province,
Cancer Care Ontario needed a
clear picture of patient care to
understand current and future
resource requirements.
■ Solution
SAS software provided Cancer
Care Ontario with a scalable,
integrated environment for data
access, transformation and
reporting, including ready-to-use
programs for data manipulation
and analysis.
■ Benefits
SAS helps Cancer Care Ontario
with cancer system planning so
patients receive the same quality
of timely care regardless of where
they live.
Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) is the
provincial agency responsible for
continually improving cancer services. It
directs nearly CAD$700 million in public
health dollars to hospitals and other
provider agencies to deliver timely,
high-quality services. Aside from
overseeing cancer prevention and
screening programs, CCO works with
cancer care professionals to deliver
cancer surgery, chemotherapy, and
radiation therapy services and to
implement quality improvements, plan
cancer services to meet current and
future patient needs, and transfer new
research into clinical practice.
The Ontario Cancer Plan has six goals
that span the continuum of cancer care:
1. Reduce the incidence of cancer.
2. Reduce the impact of cancer through
effective screening and earlier
detection.
3. Ensure timely access to effective
diagnosis and high-quality cancer
care.
4. Improve the patient experience along
every step of the cancer journey.
where they live. CCO sets standards
for quality of care across the province.
It measures performance and develops
strategies to push the system in the right
direction, using quarterly performance
reviews to link quality care to funding.
“We need to understand the services
we deliver. We need to understand
the quality of those services. And we
need to measure that,” said Graham
Woodward, Director of Provincial
Planning with CCO, who works with
his team to identify issues and develop
strategies for long-term planning. “If we
do our job well, the only thing patients
will see is timely access to high-quality
services by their provider – they won’t
even know we exist.”
CCO is governed by an act of legislation
called The Cancer Act and is account-
able to the Minister of Health and
Long-Term Care. CCO doesn’t provide
direct patient services or manage all
cancer services funding; it’s reliant on
strong working relationships with
different providers – who all have their
own standalone data sets.

5. Improve the performance of Ontario’s

cancer system.

6. Strengthen Ontario’s ability to translate

cancer research into improvements in
cancer services and control.
Given that the province of Ontario has a
publicly funded healthcare system, it’s
critical to allocate funding and resources
properly so that patients receive the
same quality of care regardless of
“The system was never designed to
track individuals through multiple
aspects of care – from the first time they
visit their family practitioner through to
screening and diagnostic services, all of
which can be provided through different
agencies,” said Woodward. “We need to
be able to measure, study and improve
 “SAS is by far the best tool I’ve found to incorporate the different data sets, and
information sources, required to tell the patient journey story. It gives me flexibility
to dig into the root data stores and modify my analysis to tell a slightly different
story for each question that I need to address.”
Graham Woodward
Director of Provincial Planning, Cancer Care Ontario

upon this, and SAS helps us do that.” sets to create what looks like a continual questions such as: How many people
SAS provides a scalable, integrated picture of patient care,” said Woodward. will require chemotherapy in 2015,
software environment for data access, “SAS helps me put together flexible data where will they seek this care, and will
transformation and reporting, including sets to see a patient’s progress through there be enough medical oncologists?
ready-to-use programs for data the cancer care system.”
manipulation. “SAS is by far the best tool I’ve found
Using SAS, for example, CCO can to incorporate the different data sets
To understand current demand – and estimate the future impact on individual and information sources required to tell
what that means for future demand – hospital resources if lung cancer surgery the patient journey story. It gives me
Woodward’s team started to build is consolidated from approximately 50 flexibility to dig into the root data stores
relatively simple models within common hospitals, with each performing a small and modify my analysis to tell a slightly
tools like Microsoft Excel. But as the volume of these, to approximately 15 different story for each question that I
models became more complicated and hospitals, which will perform higher need to address,” said Woodward.
they had to pull in different data sets volumes resulting in better outcomes for
from multiple sources, it became too patients. SAS helps generate a quantita-
risky to rely upon those tools – they tive picture to ensure that patients
turned to SAS to deal with the continue to get high-quality services and
complexity of their data. access in an appropriate time period.

“Most reporting tools generate standard SAS allows CCO to create a clear
reports out of one data set. For my job, picture of the current service delivery
I need to track a patient through time process in terms of how and where
and across various providers, which people get care. For Woodward, the
means linking multiple standalone data biggest return is his ability to answer

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