The Institut Català d'Oncologia has been functioning
for five years in a context of important changes in the Catalonian
sanitary system. This is enough time to do an initial balance of our
activity that is useful to establish the priorities of work in the
next years.
The Institut Català d'Oncologia was born with three big objectives:
To act as centre of reference of the treatment of cancer
in the Sanitary Region Costa de Ponent.
To act as centre of reference for Catalonia in special techniques
of high complexity or in tumours of low incidence.
To advise and support the Servei Català de Salut and the oncologic
community in the areas of epidemiology, prevention, research and cancer
control.
The five years elapsed since the creation of the ICO
have been useful to consolidate the institution itself, just as the
following aspects show:
The start of new teams and facilities to complete the structural
offer.
Growth of the assistance activity, just as indicates the increase
of 17.7% in the number of hospital discharges between 1996 and 1999,
15% in external radiation Therapy, 33.9% in Brachitherapy and 16%
in day Hospital.
Laboralization of the sanitary professionals in the framework offered
by the XHUP agreement.
The opening of new lines of work that complete the assistance offer
in a modern oncological centre; as an example we can indicate the improvement
in psychosocial aspects, clinical research or genetic counsel.
Consolidation of the management as a public company.
Consolidation of the framework of the assistance relations with the
university hospital of Bellvitge. This change in the framework has
not had repercussions in the assistance to the patients.
The responsibility of the oncological assistance, which
means contributing to the prevention and to the epidemiological and
clinical research on cancer, should find a clear response in this document,
which should be useful as guide for the next years. However, it should
not be regarded as a series of set objectives not modifiable. Therefore,
these objectives should be evaluated annually, revised according to
the results and the changes that inevitably will be produced in the
next years.
This document responds to the work of many professionals of the ICO
that have been consulted all through a process of evaluation of the
situation of our Institution, which was distributed to all the workers
in a prior version, in order that they contributed with the amendments
that they considered appropriate. All the personnel responsible for
the different units have also benefited from the discussion.
The central ideas of the document rotate around the two big objectives
of our Institution: to offer an assistance of quality to our patients
and to lead the fight against cancer in Catalonia in the areas of research,
epidemiological prevention and oncological assistance in Catalonia.
