My brother-in-law was recently told he was terminally ill with a maximum of 2 months left to live, following the spread of bladder cancer. 3 weeks on, my brother-in-law is still waiting for results of his scans the hospital performed. The hospital doctors never communicated with his assigned Macmillan nurse to say he had been sent home. My nephew has been spending almost every hour with his dad just to make sure that he was cared for and never left alone in his final days. He has finally managed to arrange assistance from Macmillan Nurses and Marie Curie Nurses himself and obtained appropriate referrals from his own GP. Unfortunately the poor standards of care in that north eastern University Hospital Trust do not seem to have improved from 20 years ago when my mum received poor care being left to get to the toilet on her own when she was partially blind due to a metastatic tumour on her optic nerve. Surely the good practices that occur in some areas of the UK can be shared with those areas that provide poor services for patients. How about using a buddy systems and improving IT so that when a cancer patient is diagnosed, admitted to hospital or discharged all parties involved in that care of the patient are informed automatically.