Cancer care at home works. This is what patients want more of.
New published survey shows private cancer patients in the UK are highly satisfied with receiving care in the home.
Why this study matters
Published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, this study adds important new evidence to the growing conversation around home-based cancer care in the UK. It highlights how privately funded oncology patients experience care at home, and where service providers can make practical improvements to strengthen that experience.
Home-based cancer services are increasingly recognised for their potential to reduce treatment burden and improve convenience for patients receiving cancer care. Yet patient experience data for privately funded cancer populations have remained underreported in major oncology forums, making this analysis especially valuable.
How the survey was conducted
Sciensus evaluated patient-reported experience, satisfaction and likelihood to recommend a UK homecare oncology service through a cross-sectional survey of 1,100 privately funded oncology patients. Invitations were sent by email where available, with SMS reminders used for non-responders or where no email address was on file, creating a multi-modal outreach approach designed to improve engagement.
What patients told us
The survey generated 266 responses, representing a 24.2% response rate, which is substantially above the typical 5% benchmark cited in the abstract. Satisfaction was very high: 77.1% of respondents were extremely satisfied, 18.8% were fairly satisfied, and only 4.1% were neutral or dissatisfied, resulting in a CSAT of 95.9%.
Recommendation scores were equally strong, with an NPS of 76.7, suggesting a high level of confidence in home-based oncology delivery among respondents. Together, these results support the acceptability of receiving cancer care at home for this privately funded patient group.
Free-text feedback showed that the strongest positive themes related to frontline clinical care. Patients most often praised nursing quality, professionalism and the overall experience, reinforcing the value of compassionate, expert care delivered in the home setting.
Where the best services go next
The feedback is telling in what it focuses on. Patients weren’t raising concerns about clinical quality or safety at home – they were asking for more predictability around visit times, greater continuity of nursing staff and smoother medication coordination. These are the kinds of refinements that separate a good service from an excellent one, and they reflect how high patient expectations already are when the clinical experience itself is strong.
What Sciensus is doing with these findings
Sciensus is committed to taking these results and building them into the continued development of its clinical cancer services. Sciensus delivers a comprehensive, end-to-end service that enables personalised, hospital-quality treatment at home.
This model brings together highly skilled, integrated clinical teams – including dedicated cancer nurses, specialist pharmacists and clinical nurse specialists – with advanced compounding and a nationwide delivery infrastructure, supported by digital tools. Insights from studies like this can translate into even better experiences for people receiving cancer treatment at home.
The broader picture
As more treatment pathways move beyond traditional clinical settings, success will depend not only on safety and outcomes, but on whether services feel predictable, responsive and joined up from the patient’s perspective. Further research in NHS-funded populations will help determine whether these patterns hold more broadly – but the direction is clear.
Home-based oncology services need to be designed around what patients value most, and that means taking operational friction as seriously as clinical quality.
