Project Name: Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board Northern Service early Breast Cancer Service
Project Summary:
This Collaborative Working Project (“CWP”) aims to create capacity and optimise workforce for the early Breast Cancer (“eBC”) service for the Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB) Northern Service.
To ensure effective set up and delivery of this new Systemic Anti-cancer Therapy Clinic service, the following additional workforce will be required for a period of 18 months:
- 0.6 FTE Oncology Consultant
- 2.5 FTE Band 8A Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP)
- 0.6 FTE Band 4 Administrator
Within the scope of this CWP, Novartis will provide a financial contribution for the following dedicated workforce for a duration of 18 months, with the intention that the CW partner develop a business case to continue the service.
Novartis Financial contribution for the following roles:
- 2.5 FTE Band 8A Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP)
- a 0.6 Band 4 Administrator
The CW Partner will provide a financial contribution for the funding of the following role:
- Consultant oncologist (0.6 FTE) per week
The project will ensure that patients with breast cancer in all parts of NENC ICB Northern Service are covered by 4 days per site of clinics across 2 sites (8 days of clinical activity in total) over Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust. Total cumulative number of clinics is four clinics per site. Total 8 clinics per week across the Northern part of NENC.
Expected Benefits:
Anticipated benefits for patients
- Faster access to equitable, consistent, and standardised care.
- Support earlier diagnosis and treatment decisions.
- Increased access to self-management education and drug toxicity education to improve treatment adherence and consequently patients’ outcomes, supported by a personalised care plan.
- Reduce patient waits in the clinic given extra capacity created by new workforce role.
- More streamlined pathways to improve the patient experience and limit visits to the hospital.
Anticipated benefits for the organisation
- Increase the overall quality of care and improve equity of access to specialist care for patients with eBC requiring treatment initiation, evaluation and monitoring.
- Creates additional service capacity through a dedicated early breast cancer SACT clinic model, enabling more patients to be reviewed and supported in a timely and structured way.
- Optimise workforce utilisation by enabling ACPs and administrative support to manage appropriate activities, free up consultant capacity for clinical activities within the early Breast Cancer Service that are unique to their skillset.
- Workforce efficiency and optimisation by removing administrative burden from clinical staff and coordinating patient care.
- Increased clinic efficiency by ensuring all up to date tests results are available at the right time.
- Increase the overall quality of care and improve equity of access to specialist care for patients with BC requiring treatment initiation, evaluation, and monitoring.
- Opportunity to analyse, share, and act upon patient satisfaction survey results.
- Supports equitable and consistent access to specialist early breast cancer care across the NENC Northern Service footprint, reducing variation between sites.
- Supports financial and capacity benefits through more efficient use of specialist workforce and potential tariff generation from additional clinic activity.
- Strengthens the organisation’s ability to deliver consistent, high-quality patient education at scale, improving patient understanding of recurrence risk, supporting informed treatment decisions and reducing avoidable follow-up queries through better-informed patients.
Anticipated benefits for Novartis
- Better understanding of the oncology and breast cancer NHS landscape within Northeast and North Cumbria Northern Integrated Care Board.
- Optimal use of medicines in line with local/national guidance (including Novartis medicines) in appropriate patients.
- Ethical, professional, and transparent relationship between Novartis and the Healthcare Organisation.
- Enhanced reputation supporting Novartis’ vision to provide high quality Collaborative Working with healthcare organisations, to help address some of the issues surrounding health inequalities.
Start Date & Expected Duration:
Start Date: July 2026
Expected Duration: 18 months clinical activity, Total Duration 30 months
FA-11737982 | July 2026