Key cancer treatment target time not met

● Results do not take into account the impact of coronavirus or lockdown

A key cancer waiting-time target was missed again in the first three months of this year, NHS figures have revealed.

According to official figures, 84.7 per cent of patients referred to hospital between January and March began cancer treatment within 62 days.

That was up from the 83.7 per cent achieved in the final three months of last year and better than the 81.4 per cent recorded in the first three months of 2019, but is still below the Scottish Government’s 95 per cent target.

The figures meanwhile showed almost a quarter of women referred for treatment after cervical screening waited longer than the 62-day target.

The Scottish Government paused smear tests and other cancer screening programmes on 30 March as part of efforts to tackle coronavirus, with cervical cancer screening only just resuming.

Before that, the proportion of women treated within two months had fallen.

In the first three months of this year, 77.8 per cent of patients referred after screening started receiving treatment within 62 days – down from 86.4 per cent in the period October to December last year.

Across Scotland, just two health boards met the target of treating 95 per cent of patients referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer within the target time. These health boards were NHS Lanarkshire (96.9 per cent) and NHS Borders (95.2 per cent).

Almost three out of ten patients at NHS Orkney waited longer than two months for treatment, with 71.4 per cent starting to receive help within the target time.

There were only two types of cancer where more than 95 per cent of patients started being treated within 62 days – breast cancer (96.6 per cent) and ovarian cancer (97 per cent).

In contrast, this standard was only achieved for 62.7 per cent of patients with urological cancers.

Another cancer waitingtime target was met in the period January to March this year, with 96.1 per cent of patients starting treatment within 31 days of a decision being taken on how to treat their disease.

Health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “These are particularly difficult times and we understand that patients undergoing treatment for cancer will feel especially anxious.

“It is positive that the 31-day standard continued to be met and we progressed towards meeting 62-day standard across Scotland in the period leading up to lockdown despite the extra pressures on our NHS.

“I want to thank all the hospital staff who, through their hard work and dedication, made this possible.

“It should be noted that this data pre-dates the Covid-19 outbreak and does not take into account the impact that Covid-19 has had on the 31 and 62-day standards when NHS boards prepared their mobilisation plans in response.”

Ms Freeman said the “majority of cancer treatments have continued”, but some patients’ treatment plans had been changed to “minimise their individual risk”.