Chemotherapy patients (FOI)

Request

In response to Freedom of Information request - Cancer hospital admissions (FOI) published on 15 February 2022 -  seeking further clarification. The response came with following note attached.

"Note that patients admitted under a different specialty are not included above. These figures represent patients who have commenced systemic anti-cancer therapy but would exclude some of those receiving oral chemotherapy in an outpatient setting. During the pandemic, systemic anti cancer therapies continued as per normal throughout the pandemic period however, telephone consultations commenced for some patients and oral chemotherapies were posted to the patients. This group of patients are not included in the above figures as they were not admitted as inpatients".

A

Could you please provide the numbers related to the group of patients identified in the notes (telephone consultations commenced for some patients and oral chemotherapies were posted to the patients) that would have under normal circumstanced appeared in the admission numbers for 2020 and 2021. The identified group of patients would be included in 2015 - 2019  data, but not for 2020 and 2021.

Making the Freedom of Information response related to 2021 and 2022 inaccurate, incomplete and incomparable with the rest of the data provided.

You may present the data per year should it be easier to obtain, but month by month is preferred staying inline with previous response.

However, I can calculate average per month from either data presentation.

B

Could you please provide total population data for 2015 - 2021 year for year or alternatively provide cancer admissions per capita per year, should the information requested exists in that format all ready and 2020 - 2021 figure reflects Pandemic variables identified in the notes.

Population data can be based on official Government of Jersey estimations.

Response

A

Information relating to those patients that received telephone consultations and for whom oral chemotherapies were delivered by post is not held in a centralised form, and each medical record would need to be accessed in order to gather the data required. 

As this would take Health and Community Services more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

B

Population estimates for the years 2015-2019 are available via the gov.je website:

Population estimates (gov.je)

As this information is available publicly, Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Population estimates for 2020 and 2021 are not available and therefore this is information not held. Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Articles Applied

Article 3 - Meaning of "information held by a public authority"

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.[2]

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

Article 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.