Page last updated: 4-MAR-2010

New Cancer Waiting Times

 

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 patients who had screened positive and all patients urgently referred with a suspicion of cancer (to be delivered by 2011).
  • Introduce a new 31-day target for all patients diagnosed with cancer (no matter how they were referred) from decision to treat to treatment (to be delivered by 2011).

The statements in the action plan form the basis for the revised set of cancer waiting targets, which are as follows:

  • 62-day target from receipt of referral to treatment for all cancers. This applies 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 are referred. For breast cancer, this replaces the existing 31-day diagnosis to treatment target.

Initially these targets will cover the nine cancer types:

Breast
Colorectal
Head & Neck
Lung
Lymphona
Ovarian
Melanoma
Upper Gastro-Intestinal (hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) and oesophago-gastric (OG))
Urological (prostate, bladder, other)
Cervical (initially only through screening)
Further cancer types may be added in future.

The existing 31-day acute leukaemia and paediatrics standards (formerly targets) and their reporting continue unchanged.

A tolerance level is applied to the new targets. The agreed tolerance level is 5% for each of these targets, that is the stated waiting time must be met for 95% of all patients covered by the target. For some patients it will not be clinically appropriate for treatment to begin within 18 weeks of referral, for example, where a series of tests needs to be done in sequence, or for a difficult diagnosis that may require a series of interventions and a period of time to resolve.

For information on Current Cancer Waiting Times please go to http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/6038.html

Data prior to April 2009 have been published on the Scottish Government Health and Community Care website 

Guidance/Documents to Download

New Cancer Targets Definitions Manual Version 3 (PDF 309kb) effective from 01 February 2010.

FAQs  (PDF 29kb) provides answers to commonly asked questions in relation to the New Cancer Waiting Targets Definitions Manual.

Query log - updated 26/02/2010. 

SCWaTS User Manual Version 3 - updated 04/02/2010

Validation Change Notice - Validation changes post SCWaTS user manual v3.

If you have a query regarding definitions or data submissions of New Cancer Waiting Times data please email nss.isdcancerwaitsnew@nhs.net.

New Cancer Waiting Times Contacts

Kirsty Anderson
Principal Information Analyst
0141 282 2243
KirstyAnderson@nhs.net

Sarah Callaghan
Data Development Manager
0131 275 7707
SarahCallaghan@nhs.net

Kathryn Burt
Information Analyst
0131 275 6676
kathryn.burt@nhs.net

For general enquiries please email nss.isdcancerwaitsnew@nhs.net.