Better Cancer Care Targets
Better Cancer Care, an Action Plan announced new waiting-times targets to be delivered by 2011. These are:
- From the quarter ending December 2011, 95 per cent of all patients diagnosed with cancer to begin treatment within 31 days of decision to treat,
- and 95 per cent of those referred urgently with a suspicion of cancer to begin treatment within 62 days of receipt of referral.
Publication Schedule
NHS Boards began collecting developmental test data against these targets in September 2009. Data against the 62-day target for patients starting treatment in January to March 2010 (with the exception of patients referred from screening) will be published in June 2010, and quarterly thereafter. Data against the 31-day target for patients starting treatment in April to June 2010 (with the exception of patients referred from screening) will be published in September 2010, and quarterly thereafter. In December 2010 data will be published for patients starting treatment in July to September 2010, and this will be the first publication to include screening patients.
Exclusion and Adjustment Categories
Patients can be excluded from the performance calculations for the following reasons
- Died before treatment
- Refused all treatment
- Clinical complexity
Patients who under the Better-Cancer-Care targets would have been exlucded for patient-induced non-clinical delay or co-morbidities can have a waiting-times adjustment to account for the delay. This ensures that these patients can still be included in the target cohort. Patients who would previously have been excluded as initial referral to other specialty are now included in the target cohort.
Detailed definitions of these targets are available on ISD's New Cancer Waiting Times page, where the published statistics will also become available.