Cancer Waiting Times
Latest PublicationsPublished: 27 March 2012
New Cancer Waiting Times to December 2011
Published: 20 December 2011
New Cancer Waiting Times July - September 2011
Published: 27 September 2011
New Cancer Waiting Times April - June 2011
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Newsletter
Introduction
In October 2008, the Scottish Government published Better Cancer Care - An Action Plan, where it announced it would:
- Extend the 62-day urgent referral to treatment target to include screened positive and all patients referred urgently with a suspicion of cancer (to be delivered by 2011);
- Introduce a new 31-day target for all patients diagnosed with cancer (whatever their route of referral) from decision to treat to treatment (to be delivered by 2011).
The statements in the action plan formed the basis for a revised set of cancer waiting targets, which were as follows:
- 62-day target from receipt of referral to treatment for all cancers. This applied to each of the following groups:
- any patients urgently referred with a suspicion of cancer by their primary care clinician (for example GP) or dentist
- any screened-positive patients who are referred through a national cancer screening programme (breast, colorectal or cervical)
- any direct referral to hospital (for example self-referral to A&E)
- 31-day target from decision to treat until first treatment for all cancers, no matter how patients were referred. For breast cancer, this replaced the previous 31-day diagnosis to treatment target.
Performance against these targets was achieved by December 2011; the timescale agreed by the Scottish Government. These targets are considered as National Standards from 1st April 2012.
