Shropshire hospital trust 'in UK top 10' for cancer diagnoses

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital, says it is one of the 10 best health trusts in the UK for performance on diagnosing cancer.

A new study suggests that the average time for a patient in England to be diagnosed with cancer is 40 days.

SaTH’s current average diagnosis time for patients with cancer is below the England average at 34.7 days.

The trust said it was currently reviewing a series of pathways to bring the average diagnosis time down to 28 days by 2020.

Dr Julie Davies, director of performance and delivery at Shropshire CCG, said: “The figures show that the trust is performing well against national benchmarks.

“It is important to always use the latest available data when assessing performance.

“The national figures quoted in the audit by the British Journal of General Practice have been calculated on new key performance indicators that are not currently reported within the NHS, and are not planned to be formally reported until April 2019.

“These new measures will be reported in shadow form by hospitals from April 2018 so that we have the opportunity to make improvements locally before reporting commences properly from April 2019 .”

The new study found that in 2014 the median number of days from first relevant presentation to the date of diagnosis was 40 days in England.

This ranged from 15 days to 86 days, according to the research published in the British Journal of General Practice.

Researchers, led by Ruth Swann, senior analyst for Public Health England’s National Cancer Analysis Service, examined data on more than 17,000 patients diagnosed with cancer in 2014.

They found that GPs referred the patients onto specialists within five days on average.

Patients with breast cancer had the shortest time to diagnosis, waiting on average just 14 days.

But those with prostate cancer had a median time to diagnosis of 55.5 days.

The authors found that the time from referral to being told the diagnosis of cancer exceeded 28 days in 54 per cent of patients.

This included 19 per cent of patients with breast cancer having to wait longer than 28 days compared with 74 per cent of melanoma patients.

For one in five patients the GP considered there to be an “avoidable delay” in the patient receiving their diagnosis.

Delays were most frequently attributed to the patient, primary or secondary care clinician, and system factors.

NHS England has set an ambition for all people to be diagnosed with cancer, or that cancer will be excluded, within 28 days of them being referred by their GP by 2020.

The authors suggest their finding may provide pointers to where efforts will be best directed to achieve this standard.