Cancer Treatment

National Cancer Institute's Role in Encouraging the Use of Breakthroughs Gao ID: PEMD-89-4BR October 20, 1988

In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the role that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) plays in promoting physicians' utilization of breakthroughs in cancer therapies.

GAO found that: (1) problems existed at many points in the process that breakthrough treatments take to reach cancer patients; (2) NCI had difficulties in coordinating its position on recommended treatments, so that physicians sometimes received many or conflicting responses to requests for advice on treatments; (3) NCI efforts at disseminating information on new treatments to physicians had limited success; and (4) many cancer patients did not receive what NCI considered state-of-the-art treatment because physicians often did not adopt treatments even after they received information concerning them.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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