NHS England plans to reduce two-thirds of its cancer waiting time targets in England by eliminating the requirement for cancer patients to be seen within two weeks of an urgent GP referral, as part of a broader effort to streamline cancer targets.
According to the new diagnosis standard, 75 per cent of patients must have a diagnosis or non-cancer confirmation within 28 days. Treatment should begin following diagnosis within 62 days of referral or 31 days of treatment choice.
Nine current cancer goals will be replaced by the proposed standard. These include periods such as the two-week wait between a GP referral and the initial consultant appointment, the one-month wait before starting treatment after making a decision, and the two-month wait between an urgent GP referral and the start of the first round of cancer treatment.
According to data on cancer waiting times, it still takes significantly less time than the NHS target of 93 per cent from a GP referral to the first consultant appointment. More specifically, the proportion was 80.5 per cent in June, almost exactly matching the numbers of 80.8 per cent in May and 80.3 per cent at the end of 2022.
Meanwhile, according to NHS data, nearly three million (2.92 million) patients had life-saving cancer treatments in the past year, which is a record-high amount.
The NHS saw more than 261,000 patients for urgent cancer examinations in June alone, more than twice as many as were seen in the same month a decade earlier (101,592).
Additionally, a record 335,000 individuals began cancer treatment in the most recent year (July 2022–June 2023), an increase of more than 20,000 from the same period before the epidemic (July 2018–June 2019).
