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Cancer Datasets: Phase I

  • Last modified date:
    19 January 2004

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.

A series of staged milestones towards this goal have been introduced for 2001, 2002 and 2005. From 2002, the intention is to capture patient level data, to be submitted to a national database.

The waiting time dataset 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.

(see HSC 2002/005 which is on the DH website at Cancer Waiting Times.)

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