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Cancer Waiting Times October–December 2008
19/05/2009
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published Cancer Waiting Times Statistics for October-December 2008.
The publication includes 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:
- 95.4 per cent of reported urgently referred patients diagnosed with cancer in October-December 2008 began treatment within 62 days of their referral. In July-September 2008 94.6 per cent of reported urgently referred cancer patients began treatment within 62 days of referral. In January-March 2007 84.5 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 (98.9 per cent) and head and neck (87.9 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 Dumfries and Galloway (92.8 per cent) respectively
These statistics are used to assess performance against the NHSScotland cancer waiting-times target of 95 per cent of patients to begin treatment within 62 days of urgent referral.
The small number of patients diagnosed quarterly in island Health Boards (for example seven urgently referred patients were diagnosed with cancer in NHS Orkney during October-December 2008) may lead to substantial quarter-on-quarter fluctuation in the percentage of people starting treatment within 62 days. For example 50.0 per cent of patients reported for Orkney in the previous quarter were treated within 62 days whereas this quarter 100 per cent were. This is why the bullet point in the main findings relates only to mainland boards.
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. Work is underway in defining and measuring the new cancer waiting time targets. The necessary changes to the official statistics data collection are being developed as part of this work. The statistics published today do not take account of these changes.