Page last updated: 29-JUN-2010

New Cancer Waiting Times

 

Background and History

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 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.

Performance is monitored on the following 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

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 62 days 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.  The NHS Board to which a patient is initially referred is responsible for meeting 95% compliance within the 62-day target.  The NHS Board where the patient receives their first treatment will be responsible for meeting 95% compliance within the 31 day target.  This responsibility remains unchanged if an NHS Board chooses to outsource part of a patient's care.

The new 31 and 62-day targets are both included as performance measures in HEAT 2010/11.  Further information on the HEAT Performance Measures can be found on the ISD NHSScotland Performance HEAT web pages and the Scottish Government Scotland Performs HEAT web pages. 

Consultation on the Publication of New Cancer Waiting Times Statistics

To remain relevant to the changing set of targets the existing cancer waiting times statistics have been replaced with a new series of figures.  A consultation document was produced which summarised ISD's proposals for the new series of official statistics due to be published from June 2010.  The consultation period lasted just over 10 weeks and during that time we received many constructive and helpful responses. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all contributors who have taken the time to participate in this process and provided valued feedback.  Details of the consultation results can be found in these Summary Feedback Report [PDF 342KB], and Detailed Feedback Report [PDF 640KB], documents.