Senonetwork Quality Indicators in Breast Cancer Care

Introduction: Senonetwork, an Italian no profit association, is committed in breast cancer care, to guarantee that all women have access to diagnostic and treatment pathways in compliance with the referring guidelines. The national discipline - related societies dedicated to breast cancer care and the advocacy are represented in Senonetwork scientific committee. Senonetwork has created a datawarehouse (Senonet) to collect Breast Centre data on a voluntary base and in return to issue for each participating Breast Centre a yearly data report towards Senonetwork quality indicators. Objectives: this paper aims at defining evidence-based quality indicators shared among the national discipline related societies dedicated to breast cancer care, to bring them to the attention of the regional and national authorities. Some of the Quality Indicators can be directly taken from the hospital discharge form, but this is not sufficient for a comprehensive evaluation of the different phases of breast cancer patients' diagnosis and treatment within a Breast Centre. Also in this regard, the collaboration among scientific societies and authorities is essential. Methods: to update and increase the set of quality indicators previously published, end 2020 Senonetwork set up a working group of experts and a revision committee including the scientific discipline-related societies represented in Senonetwork (AIOM, AIRO, ANISC, GISMa, SIAPEC-IAP, SICPRE, SIRM). For each quality indicator, based on literature and expert opinion, a minimum standard and a target have been defined. Conclusions: a set of quality indicators, defined by experts and aligned with the indications of the referring scientific societies, going through the different steps of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, allows Breast Centres to have a complete and integrated vision of the performance reached by the multidisciplinary team. It also represents a help in improving quality of care through benchmarking, educational and research activities within a national network.