Set up cancer test units near shops, NHS told

NHS screening units should be stationed near shops and offices to boost uptake, say experts

NHS screening units should be set up near shops and offices to make it much easier for workers to have cancer checks, according to Prof Mike Richards, who is heading a national review. It should be as easy for patients to book smear tests and mammograms on their smartphones as buying a rail ticket, he said. The former Department of Health national cancer director said Britain could only tackle its poor cancer survival rates with a radical overhaul of services.

NHS screening units should be set up near shops and offices so workers can have cancer checks in the lunch break, the head of a national review has said.

Prof Sir Mike Richards also said it should be as easy for patients to book smear tests and mammograms on their smartphones as buying a rail ticket. The former Department of Health national cancer director said Britain could not tackle its poor cancer survival rates without a radical overhaul of the way services were run. Last year a league table of survival rates put the UK towards the bottom of global league tables for several common cancers.

Sir Mike has been commissioned to review screening programmes after a series of scandals and growing concern about a decline in uptake of checks.

“We need to promote convenience,” he said, “offering more out-of-hours appointments – places you can get your screening done at 8pm – and services nearer to where people work so they can be checked in their lunch break.”

Take-up of cervical screening is at its lowest ebb for 21 years, while uptake of mammograms has hit a 10-year low. Sir Mike said his review, which will publish an interim report in April, found that around half of patients who do not attend screening had intended to have such checks but did not find the time.

“In all the other branches of life we have moved to convenience,” said Sir Mike, who retired as NHS chief inspector of hospitals in 2017. “I am not a ‘techie’ but even I book my rail and plane tickets online. This is what should be happening in screening.”

Sir Mike told a conference last week the NHS had “woefully poor diagnostics in hospitals,” and claimed budgets that should be spent on scanners were being raided to balance the books.

He said: “We haven’t enough staff and we haven’t enough equipment. We haven’t enough diagnosticians – the radiologists, the radiographers, the colonoscopists – we need to look at that.”

Statistics showed Britain lagged behind most OECD nations in cancer survival, with mortality rates similar to the Czech Republic and Lithuania. NHS figures published just last week showed the worst performance against current cancer targets in a decade, with almost one in four patients waiting more than two months for treatment.

Uptake of breast cancer screening among women aged 50 to 70 is down to 70.5 per cent, the lowest for a decade, while take-up of cervical screening is 71.4 per cent, the worst since records began 21 years ago.

Sir Mike said his review was likely to call for a major upgrade of technology and the use of more modern scanning techniques. He will also examine the use of genomics to find high-risk patients who might need to be screened at a younger age and the use of artificial intelligence in screening services.

♦ Women could be forced to wait months for cervical cancer screening results because the planned closure of dozens of laboratories has left the service in “meltdown”, according to one health professional.

Alison Cropper, the chair of the British Association for Cytopathology and a consultant biomedical scientist, told The Guardian that Public Health England’s campaign had been launched at “the worst time there could possibly have been”.