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Cancer waiting times

  • Last modified date:
    10 December 2007

The Cancer Plan sets out the long-term goal that no patient should wait longer than one month from an urgent referral by their GP with suspected cancer, to the start of treatment, except for a good clinical reason, or through their personal choice. It is hoped to achieve this goal by 2005.

A series of staged milestones towards this goal have been introduced for 2001, 2002 and 2008. From 2002, the intention is to capture patient level data, to be submitted to a national database.

The waiting time dataset has been developed as part of the national cancer dataset and will be used to track the patient journey from GP referral for suspected cancer to treatment, or from decision to treat date to treatment for patients coming through the non-urgent GP referral route.

This is a major change for the NHS in the way data is collected and used, as it involves cross-organisational information flows, and produces patient level data. Performance against Cancer Plan targets will be published using this data.

Waiting times for cancer. Progress, lessons learned and next steps: 5 October 2006

Earlier this year the Secretary of State for Health announced that she had commissioned Professor Mike Richards to produce a ' cancer waits story', covering the programme of action and reform which has enabled the NHS to reduce cancer waiting times. Today the report is published on the Department of Health website.

The change needed to bring about this improvement in performance has been an enormous undertaking. Much has been achieved thanks to the commitment of NHS staff at all levels to diagnosing and treating cancer patients promptly. NHS Trusts have re-designed the way they deliver services to cancer patients from initial referral through the stages of diagnosis and treatment.

Two week wait

2001 targets

Monitoring the two week wait and 2001 standards

2002 and 2005 targets

National Clinical Audit Support Programme

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