Follow each patient from biopsy report to treatment cycles, radiotherapy fractions and surveillance visits.

A cancer patient arrives with a biopsy report, scans and a referral letter. A tumour board meets, a protocol is chosen, and treatment then runs for weeks or months in cycles, fractions and review visits. Every step depends on the one before it.

Most centres hold this across a registration desk, a pharmacy, a day-care ward, a radiotherapy unit and a billing counter, each with its own list. A missed cycle or a late scan is easy to overlook when no one sees the whole course.

Registration opens a file and collects the outside reports. The medical oncologist reviews the histology, the stage and the performance status, and presents the case at the weekly tumour board with the surgeon and the radiation oncologist. The board’s decision is written in the file, and the patient is counselled on the plan and the estimated cost.

On a chemotherapy day the day-care nurse checks the cycle number, the blood counts and the prescribed regimen before the pharmacy prepares the drug bags. The pharmacist works from the doctor’s order, mixes under the centre’s own checks and labels each bag with the patient and the cycle. Radiotherapy has its own path of simulation, contouring, planning and daily fractions on a machine with a fixed number of slots.

Social workers arrange travel, lodging and financial support. Billing keeps package estimates, part payments and sponsor letters, and the follow-up desk calls patients back for scans and blood tests long after treatment ends.