A new goal for cancer waiting times
5.8 The government believes the ultimate goal should therefore be to offer patients a maximum one month wait from an urgent referral for suspected cancer to the beginning of treatment.
Where patients wait longer, this should be because of the needs of the diagnostic process or their personal choice, not because of in-built delays in the system of care. This one month goal is in line with the best that patients experience in Europe and the USA. It represents the kind of care that clinicians would like to offer and patients to receive.
5.9 Past decades of under investment mean this goal is not yet within reach. It will need more equipment and additional staff, working in new ways. It will take time and effort to achieve. But it is important to have a shared direction of travel. Provided that we can recruit the extra staff, and the NHS makes the necessary reforms, we hope to achieve this goal by 2008.
Achieving the goal
5.10 Clinicians and patients are equally clear that we need practical and realistic plans to help the NHS make progress. So this Cancer Plan sets milestones between 2000 and 2005 to drive forward change rapidly. The milestones take account of the need to expand capacity through investment in the workforce and in equipment for diagnosis and treatment (see Chapters 8 and 9). Investment will also need to be matched by reform in the way cancer services are delivered.
