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Cancer waiting times
18/11/2008
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published Cancer Waiting-Times Statistics for April-June 2008, including the number of cancer patients urgently referred for each of the geographic health boards and the proportion of these treated within 62 days of referral, broken down by tumour site.
The main findings are:
- 93.5 per cent of reported urgently referred patients diagnosed with cancer in April-June 2008 began treatment within 62 days of their referral. In January-March 2008 94.1 per cent of reported urgently referred cancer patients began treatment within 62 days of referral. In April-June 2007 87.3 per cent of reported urgently referred cancer patients began treatment within 62 days of referral
- The cancer types with the highest and lowest proportions of patients starting treatment within 62 days of urgent referral were breast (98.2 per cent) and Head and Neck (86.5 per cent) respectively
- The mainland Health Boards with the highest and lowest proportions of patients starting treatment within 62 days of urgent referral were NHS Borders (100 per cent) and NHS Grampian (89.9 per cent) respectively
Changes to the definitions of the 62-day cancer waiting-times target were announced as part of Better Cancer Care. The main change is that the 62-day target will cover patients urgently referred with a suspicion of cancer, rather than all urgent referrals. The necessary changes to the official statistics data collection are being developed and the timetable for implementing these changes will be announced in February 2009.