chomnz

Patient Experiences with Prostate Cancer- 2024 summary report out

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 22:10:58 GMT

PCOR-ANZ Participants: Did you know your experience is helping transform prostate cancer care?

The experiences of you and nearly 175,000 men across Australia and New Zealand are shaping the future of prostate cancer care.

By participating in the PCOR-ANZ, you’ve helped build one of the largest prostate cancer registries in the world.

Your data helps researchers and clinicians understand what’s working – and where care can improve – across diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.

See trends from almost 175,000 men like you in the latest report and discover how your contribution is making a real difference.

Thank you for being part of the change.

Read report here

Latest PCOR-ANZ Report Shows Trends from 175,000 Men With Prostate Cancer

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 21:51:55 GMT

Get the latest snapshot of prostate cancer care in Australia and New Zealand.

The PCOR-ANZ 2024 Annual Report provides insights drawn from one of the largest prostate cancer datasets, covering ~175,000 men across 250+ hospitals and clinics.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in Australia and New Zealand. The Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry – Australia and New Zealand (PCOR-ANZ) has recently released a new report that sheds light on the state of prostate cancer care and trends in outcomes from 2015 to 2022.

Principally funded by Movember , PCOR-ANZ brings together data from over 175,000 men across 258 hospitals and clinics, covering 72% of men with prostate cancer in Australia and 83% in New Zealand.

What is PCOR-ANZ?

PCOR-ANZ is a clinical quality registry for prostate cancer. You could think of a clinical quality registry like a fitness tracker for cancer care. Just like a fitness tracker collects data about your daily steps, heart rate, and sleep to help you understand your health and improve your fitness, a registry collects data about patients' treatments, their side effects, and outcomes.

Doctors and researchers use this data to figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and how to improve care for everyone. It’s all about tracking, learning, and getting better over time. This research doesn’t just aim to treat the disease—it’s about improving the entire journey of care.

Key Findings from the Report

The report captures insights from 175,000 people with prostate cancer (55,815 of which have completed patient-reported outcome measures) from 258 hospitals and clinics (with 411 doctors taking part). Key findings include:

Diagnosis Trends : Use of pre-biopsy MRI has increased dramatically from 5.6% in 2015 to 73% in 2022, with particularly high adoption in the Australian Capital Territory (91%), Queensland (87%), and Victoria (83%). This rise reflects improved diagnostic precision, helping to better identify clinically significant cancers while reducing unnecessary biopsies. The increased use of MRI is an important step toward evidence-based, patient-centered care and supports clinicians in making more accurate treatment decisions.

Treatment Choices : The proportion of men with low-risk prostate cancer managed with Active Surveillance has risen from 66% in 2015 to 85% in 2022, demonstrating strong uptake of best-practice guidelines. This approach helps avoid overtreatment, preserves quality of life, and aligns with contemporary recommendations for safely monitoring low-risk disease. The trend shows growing clinician confidence and patient acceptance in choosing conservative management where appropriate.

Patient-Reported Outcomes : One of the key strengths of the PCOR-ANZ registry is its collection of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). PROMs are questionnaires which individuals complete to provide insight about how their treatment has impacted their overall health. These surveys measure aspects like urinary and sexual function, mental wellbeing, and other quality of life measures. For example, men who underwent surgery reported higher rates of urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction, while those who received hormone therapy were more likely to experience fatigue or a lack of energy.

Get the Full Picture

Ready to dive into the findings? The full report and a summary version are available for download. Whether you’re a healthcare professional, researcher, or someone affected by prostate cancer, these reports provide essential information about the current state of prostate cancer care across Australia and New Zealand.

Full report

Summary

Acknowledgements

We extend our thanks to all the people who have participated in the PCOR-ANZ registry and contributed to this report. Your data is helping us better understand and tackle the challenges that you, and others in your position, are facing.

PCOR-ANZ also relies on the contributions of the clinical community, who work tirelessly to ensure that data is collected accurately and comprehensively. Special thanks go to the members of the PCOR-ANZ Governance Committee, the Advisory Committee, the Data Advisory Committee, the Data Coordination Centre at Monash University, and the teams of Jurisdiction Coordinators and data collectors across Australia and New Zealand.

PCOR-NZ Data: Key findings in published papers

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 04:05:54 GMT

Major milestone for PCOR-NZ: Two new papers published! These studies, published in the NZMJ and the BJUI, offer valuable insights into key areas of prostate cancer care for NZ.

Two recently published papers highlight the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry New Zealand's (PCOR-NZ) contributions to different areas of prostate cancer care. The first study focuses on identifying disparities, while the second examines quality improvement initiatives.

Addressing Disparities in Prostate Cancer Care

The first paper, published in the BJUI , examines variations in prostate cancer assessment and management between Māori and non-Māori men in New Zealand. The study used data from 13,893 participants in the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry New Zealand (PCOR-NZ), marking a significant milestone as the first population-level analysis of prostate cancer care in New Zealand using PCOR-NZ data.

The research, led by Dr. Eng Toh, confirmed findings from other studies indicating that Māori men are unfortunately more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age and with more aggressive disease. The study also revealed variations in the types of diagnostic tests and treatments received, and in wait times for treatment. These differences remained even when factors like age, location, and co-morbidities were taken into account. These findings support the need for culturally appropriate and timely access to prostate cancer care for Māori men. It also highlights the importance of continuing to collect national data within PCOR-NZ. The continued collection of data will allow us to monitor the impact of interventions aimed at reducing variations within prostate cancer diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.

The paper was one piece of work undertaken by Dr. Toh during his urology research registrar tenure, and we are grateful for his dedication and in-depth analysis of this PCOR-NZ data. Special thanks to The Movember Foundation and Bike for Blokes Charity for their financial support of this study.

Title: Variation in prostate cancer assessment and management between Māori and non-Māori in New Zealand

Eng Ann Toh, Jared White, Judith Clarke, Phil Hider, and Stephen Mark, BJU Int. June 2025, https://doi.org/10.1111/bju.16805

Clinician Feedback on PCOR-NZ Quality Improvement Reports

Another study, initiated by CHOMNZ and just published in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ ) , explores how New Zealand urologists use the Quality Indicator (QI) reports generated from PCOR-ANZ data. These reports, generated by Monash University, provide participating hospitals and clinicians with New Zealand-specific data benchmarked against the broader PCOR-ANZ dataset. The research found that most clinicians value these reports for helping them audit their practice, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement. The majority of clinicians prefer receiving the reports as digital PDFs, and most find the data clear and useful.

The study also highlighted some practical suggestions from clinicians, such as making reports more concise and providing a summary of key findings up front. These insights are already helping to shape future reporting, ensuring that the information remains relevant and accessible for clinicians.

We are grateful to Andreas Nicolaou for leading this work as part of an academic summer scholarship, and to all the clinicians who took the time to share their perspectives. We also thank The Movember Foundation (funders of PCOR-ANZ), the Canterbury Urology Research Trust (CURT), and the University of Otago Summer Research Scholarship Programme (Christchurch) for their support of this study. We appreciate the efforts of Monash University who continue to provide these QI reports to hospitals and clinicians participating in PCOR-NZ

Title: Clinician Feedback for Bi-Annual Quality Improvement Reports Generated by the Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry Australia and New Zealand
Andreas Samuel Nicolaou, Eng Ann Toh, Judith Clarke, Stephen Mark, Phil Hider,

Vol. 138 No. 1616 6 June 2025, DOI: 10.26635/6965.6721 https://nzmj.org.nz/journal/vol-138-no-1616

Click here to read more about other research we have been involved in, and available research topics.

2024 Year in Review: Progress and Impact

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 00:11:11 GMT

We're excited to share some updates on the NZ Prostate Cancer Outcome Registry (PCOR-NZ) as we celebrate 8 years of operation and over 23,000 participants!

Growing national data

We're committed to capturing the experiences of as many people with prostate cancer as possible, and we're proud to report that from humble beginnings in 2016 with two pilot sites, we’re now collecting around 90% of newly diagnosed cases in New Zealand. Since 2019, our data collection has increased by 1,000 cases annually– to approximately 4,100 new diagnosis each year. Alongside clinical data, individuals living with prostate cancer provide valuable insights into their quality of life, with survey response rates of about 50% before treatment and 60% twelve months post- treatment.

We couldn't achieve these high rates of engagement without the invaluable contributions of urologists, radiation oncologists, clinic staff, and, most importantly, men living with prostate cancer who are willing to contribute their own experiences to improve the future of prostate cancer care.

Reporting back

Over the past year, we've shared over 200 Confidential Quality Indicator reports with participating sites and clinicians. These 6-monthly reports provide valuable insights into diagnosis, treatment, and quality of life outcomes for men living with prostate cancer. By bench-marking against peers and other hospitals across Australia and New Zealand, clinicians can identify areas for improvement to enhance patient care and quality of life outcomes.

Uncovering Trends and Variations

With a comprehensive national dataset, we're gaining a deeper understanding of trends and variations in prostate cancer diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes across Aotearoa. Our research registrar, Dr. Eng Toh, has taken a deep delve into the data this year. Research topics including ethnicity variances, MRI usage and surgical margin rates have been well received at conferences and workshops in in Australia and New Zealand. Dr. Toh's research on trends in diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer has highlighted important variances between Māori and non-Māori men, and has been submitted for publication to the BJUI.

At a PCOR-ANZ level, two bi-national reports on trends in Prostate Cancer have been released- with the latest infographic-style summary report released last month. These can be read here

If you are interested in undertaking research using PCOR-NZ data in 2025, and are looking for a topic, please see our research page for a list of available topics- with co- supervisors available.

Taking Action for Better Outcomes

The inaugural 'Improving Urological Cancer Care Conference', chaired by Stephen Mark (Clinical Lead PCOR-NZ and Chair- CHOMNZ), brought together clinicians and other stakeholders to discuss variations and gaps highlighted by the PCOR-NZ data. This is exciting as it was the first time a quality improvement initiative of this nature has been attempted within any of the PCOR jurisdictions. A format of presentation and discussion resulted in ten recommendations for action, and these were recently presented and endorsed at the USANZ Aotearoa conference in Wellington. These included areas of action for clinicians, health services, government, and patient advocate groups. We're grateful to The Movember Foundation, CURT and NZ Prostate Cancer Foundation Charities for their support in making this conference a success.

Improving Surgical Outcomes

One area of variation identified through analysis of the PCOR-NZ data is the rate of positive surgical margins in New Zealand. Alongside Health NZ- Canterbury, CHOMNZ have been awarded an initial Health Research Council grant to review and improve these positive margin rates. A project group, formed at the recent Urology Annual Scientific Meeting in Wellington, is working towards a second grant to further advance the project.

Thank You for Your Support

As a charitable trust, CHOMNZ are incredibly grateful for all who voluntarily give their time, knowledge, or lived experience to support the work of improving health outcomes for those diagnosed with prostate cancer in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

We acknowledge the funding support for our registry and related projects, from The Movember Foundation, NZ Prostate Cancer Foundation, Canterbury Urology Research Trust, and Bike for Blokes charities. Stay tuned for more updates and research findings in the coming year!

Health Research Council funding of $30K awarded

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 02:14:22 GMT

Big news: Dr. Eng Toh has secured a $30,000 Health Research Council activation grant to examine ethnic inequities alongside other factors affecting positive surgical margin rates in men with Prostate cancer

The funding from the New Zealand Health Research Council Activation Grant will enable Dr. Toh and his research team to examine the incidence of surgical margins after radical prostatectomy between Māori and non-Māori in conjunction with other factors affecting margin positivity after radical prostatectomy.

The research team consists of Consultant Urologists Stephen Mark, Jared White and George Acland, Professor of Population Health, University of Otago, Christchurch, Phil Hider, and PCOR-NZ National Manager Jude Clarke. This activation funding from HRC is to establish health delivery research evidence needs or research opportunities, or develop research capacity, before applying for further funding. Health NZ have published an article on Dr. Toh and this funding award. Click here to read the full article

PCOR-ANZ Annual Report 2023: Improving Prostate Cancer Care. Update Nov 24: Summary report added

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 04:12:53 GMT

Unveiling the latest PCOR-ANZ report: A Journey Through Prostate Cancer Care Evolution - summary report added!

We are thrilled to announce the release of the PCOR-ANZ Annual Report 2023: “Prostate Cancer Across Australia and New Zealand PCOR-ANZ 2015-2021.” This comprehensive report is dedicated to improving clinical standards and patient outcomes in prostate cancer care through extensive data collection and analysis captured within the PCOR-ANZ registry. Update-Nov 2024: An additional 'summary report' has now been added -see below for links.

see highlights below, and read full report here or summary report here

Key Highlights Relevant to Aotearoa New Zealand:

· Completeness of Data Collection: 100 % public cases; over 80% new diagnoses
· Low access to MRI pre-biopsy and targeted biopsy techniques in Aotearoa
· Higher percentage of low-risk disease diagnosed, high cost and low value
· High percentage of low-risk disease managed through Active Surveillance

Registry Overview:

· The Australian and New Zealand Prostate Cancer Outcomes Registry (PCOR-ANZ) is a Movember-funded clinical registry.
· Findings are based on data from 92,167 newly diagnosed individuals with prostate cancer, spanning 2015 to 2021.
· Data collected from 268 clinical sites and 396 clinicians across Australia and New Zealand.
· Impressive population coverage: Approximately 59% in Australia and 80% in New Zealand.

Transformative Trends :

Throughout the reporting period, the landscape of prostate cancer management across NCCN risk groups has undergone remarkable transformations, mirroring the strides made in international guidelines and recommendations. Two such transformative trends outlined in the report are:

A shift towards Active Surveillance for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer: Proportion of individuals opting for active surveillance increased from 66% (2015) to 80% (2021).
Management of Prostate Cancer with Regional Involvement: Utilisation of radiation therapy alongside androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) increased from 33% (2015) to 52% (2021).

These trends reflect an evolving landscape where emerging technologies and therapeutic strategies enhance patient outcomes. The PCOR-ANZ remains uniquely positioned to monitor and evaluate these care practices.

Get the Full Picture

Explore the Full Report here

Explore the Summary Report here

Acknowledgements

Welcome Dr Eng Toh, our new urology research registrar

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 03:24:01 GMT

Deep dive into inequities in NZ Prostate Cancer diagnosis, treatment and quality of life begins

Welcome Dr. Eng Ann Toh- MB ChB (Otago) PhD Medicine (Otago) DPH (Otago) MPH (Otago),

We are thrilled to to have Dr. Eng Toh leading a research project that will use PCOR-NZ data to analyse inequities in the diagnosis, treatment and quality of life of NZ men living with prostate cancer. The project is funded with generous donations from BikeforBlokes and The Movember Foundation . This is a vital topic that needs attention and with the contribution of over 18000 men to PCOR-NZ we have the data to make a difference. Eng is undertaking this work as he completes his advanced training in public health medicine, and will be based at the Urology Department of Christchurch Hospital. We will keep you posted on his progress and insights.

Bike for Blokes reach the finish line with a donation of $130,000

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:41:05 GMT

Stephen Mark (PCOR-NZ Clinical Lead) gratefully accepts a donation for $130K of funds raised by the Bike For Blokes charity!

About Bike for Blokes

It was initially billed as ‘two blokes cycling the length of New Zealand to raise awareness and funds for charities that support men’s health’. Thereafter, it developed a life of it’s own, as firstly our friends, then their friends, then supporters and communities came on board to support us.

As a result, we have now completed two Bike for Blokes events, each involving us cycling the length of the country and in total, raising more than half a million dollars for men’s health. Our first year saw just the two of us complete the ride, with another 40 people joining us for an hour, a day or more. Year two saw six riders take on the entire distance, and again we were accompanied by friends, sponsors and total strangers, some of whom took on the head wind, while others sat behind us and chatted.

We’re indebted to a large family of sponsors, all of whom you can see listed on the ‘Our Sponsors’ page. The big one is motor vehicle group Armstrong’s, who have been with us from the start, providing funding, support vehicles and hosting our events.

Raising money for charity is tough going. So much so that we don’t want to waste any. One of our core principles is that every rider, and every supporter, including the two of us and our families, pays their own costs to be with us. That means we pay for our bikes, spare tyres and mechanical costs, accommodation, flights, food and even the odd beer along the way. As a result, over 92% of the money we raise goes to our charity partners.

Our goal is to create a conversation where men talk openly about their health and wellbeing and to raise money along the way. So far, we’ve improved our own health too, and had a bit of fun along the way.

State of the Registry 2022 - PCOR-ANZ update

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 13:56:57 GMT

As a supplement to the recently released PCOR-ANZ 2021 Annual Summary Report, a 2022 update has been released as an infographic

This provides a current data snapshot, as well as recent registry achievements. There are now over 91,000 people across Australia and New Zealand enrolled in the dataset, and over 37,000 people have completed a questionnaire.

New to PCOR-ANZ 2022

New Registry Platform
The new PCOR-ANZ technology solution platform is now live in two jurisdictions (TAS and NZ) with other jurisdictions to follow shortly in 2023. Published research 73 papers have been published in medical
journals to quantify changes in the care and outcomes for people with prostate cancer, and to identify areas of inequity.
Improved Governance
New committees with specialist roles have been implemented in 2022 along with updates to governance documents. These changes better support the primary registry aim of improving the care and outcomes for men Living with prostate cancer.

New reports for contributing clinicians
Radiation Therapy Quality Indicator Reports were released for the first time in addition to the existing
surgical reports.

Published research
73 papers have been published in medical journals to quantify changes in the care and outcomes for people with prostate cancer, and to identify areas of inequity.

The PCOR-ANZ Annual Report 2021

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 14:02:07 GMT

The PCOR-ANZ Annual report 2021 has recently been released, providing an update on work across Australia and New Zealand

The 2021 - 2022 Annual Report

Given the challenges and delays of COVID-19, this latest annual report has been provided in an abbreviated format, providing an overview of
current trends with respect to the diagnosis, care and outcomes of men with prostate cancer.

The clinical data included was collected from men diagnosed in the 5-year period between 2015, when PCOR-ANZ commenced operations as a
bi-national registry, and 2019. It also includes PROMs data from those men, which was collected 12 months post treatment; or 12 months post
diagnosis if commencing active surveillance/ watchful waiting (AS/WW).

In this brief report, we have chosen to focus on bi-national comparisons between Australia and New Zealand. We hope clinicians, researchers
and consumers alike will find it a useful guide to understanding ongoing trends.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge our debt of gratitude to the 382 participating clinicians, 250 participating hospitals and all of our dedicated
PCOR-ANZ staff and committee members whose continued efforts make this report possible, especially under the challenging circumstances we are currently facing. But in particular, it is the men with prostate cancer who gave their time to complete PROMs questionnaires that we wish to thank. It is only your willingness to share your data that allows us to continue to help improve outcomes and standards of care for men
diagnosed with prostate cancer.