Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a needs assessment tool in primary care for people with active cancer with regard to unmet patient and caregiver need, compared with usual care

A GP uses a simple checklist to ask a cancer patient about the things worrying them most—money, pain, help at home—and the patient’s care changes as a result. This matters because cancer patients and their family carers often have serious unmet needs—practical, emotional, or medical—that doctors in busy GP surgeries routinely miss. There is no standard way for GPs to spot these gaps. The Needs Assessment Tool-Cancer (NAT-C) is a short, structured questionnaire designed to fix that. It has already been tested in UK primary care and shown to be feasible. The trial will involve 1,080 cancer patients from 54 GP practices. Half the practices will be trained to use the NAT-C; the other half will continue with usual care. Researchers will compare whether the tool reduces unmet needs for patients and carers, and whether it saves or costs the health service money. If the NAT-C works, it could become a routine part of cancer follow-up in primary care—a cheap, quick way to catch problems that otherwise go unaddressed, and to direct resources where they are actually needed.