An important role of SCAN is to monitor the process and outcomes of care given to cancer patients, in order to provide confidence in the quality of care, and to identify areas for improvement and change.

Please note the following points in reading these reports:

Each report will state the source of any performance measures used.  They may for example be clinical standards published by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland in 2008 (for which further information can be obtained from the Healthcare Improvement Scotland website.

Reports present aggregated results on the group of patients diagnosed during a particular period, e.g. January – December 2008.  Results may be affected by specific events during those periods, for example a service may move from one hospital to another.

Since these results relate to only one-time period, the number of patients falling into certain categories can be very small and differences may be due to chance or normal variation.

The data does not at present make allowance for the differences in the severity of illness of patients at the point where they can be diagnosed.

The report is based on results collated from records of identified patients diagnosed within a particular time period and may not include all the patients.  We will publish estimates of the percentage identified based on historical estimate of the percentage of patient records identified.  If the percentage of patient records missing were large the reported results might not be representative.

There is information in the reports on who to contact for any further information about the content of the reports.