UK Cancer Patients Have to Wait 55 Days to Start Treatment

The UK ranked 33rd out of 41 developed nations for cancer mortality in 2019, according to research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Fresh NHS data shows that patients in the UK have to wait an average of 55 days to start cancer treatment. This means that patients are now waiting a week longer for hospital treatment than they were in 2020.

"The rise in cancer waiting times is evident, with only 78 percent of urgent referrals seen within two weeks. But we should remember that more than 20 percent of patients are diagnosed via non-urgent pathways, where waiting times can be several months, or in A&E when a catastrophic event occurs," Professor Gordon Wishart, chief medical officer at private clinic Check4Cancer, said.

According to Professor Sir Mike Richards, former cancer director at the Department of Health, there are many different reasons for this situation to have arisen, but the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse.

In turn, the Department of Health said that it was working at “pace to improve outcomes for cancer patients across England, including by opening over 80 community diagnostic centers”.

Two years ago, British charity Breast Cancer Now announced that around 986,000 women had missed their mammograms after screening programs were paused in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the analysis of NHS England data, patients faced the largest increase in waiting times of everyone urgently referred to a cancer specialist. A recent analysis in daily newspaper, the Guardian, revealed that almost 10,000 patients referred by a general practitioner to a cancer specialist had to wait for more 28 days – instead of 14-day waiting time – in July.

The United Kingdom has a shortage of about 12,000 doctors, and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, according to a report released by the UK Health and Social Care Committee in July.