Ietje Perfors

87 At the same time, Dutch healthcare reports indicate that in 2020 the workload for GPs regarding care for patients with cancer will increase by about 66% within the Netherlands. 4 In order to divide this workload, policymakers suggest to involve the whole primary care spectrum, including GPs and primary care nurses. 4, 6 Beside keeping the workload acceptable, involving a primary care team may affect hospital care use. 12, 13 Also, increased GP involvement was associated with higher patient satisfaction with care and treatment decision. 14–17 Scarce evidence suggests favourable effects of increased involvement of primary care in shared decision making and guidance during treatment, starting from diagnosis. 12–17 However, to our knowledge, the effectiveness of structured active follow-up by a primary care team starting from cancer diagnosis has not yet been published. Therefore, we designed the so called ‘GRIP study’. In this paper, we describe the design and methods of the GRIP study. 4