Cancer: Health Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help reduce delays in treatment for cancer patients.
Answered by Karin Smyth
Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the National Health Service and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. In particular, he highlighted the need to improve the number of patients starting their treatment within 62 days of referral and to increase the number of patients diagnosed at an earlier stage.
We will improve cancer survival rates and hit all NHS cancer waiting time targets within five years, so no patient waits longer than they should.
The NHS will maximise the pace of the roll-out of additional diagnostic capacity, delivering the final year of the three-year investment plan for establishing Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) and ensuring timely implementation of new CDC locations and upgrades to existing CDCs, with capacity prioritised for cancer diagnostics.
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