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Progress on cancer waiting times
26/11/2007
The first set of cancer waiting time statistics to cover a period after a new end-2007 absolute target delivery time was set were published today.
In May this year, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon insisted that Health Boards focus their efforts on achieving an overdue target that 95 per cent of patients should wait no longer than 62 days from urgent referral to treatment by the end of 2007.
Official statistics published today show performance for the quarter April to June 2007. Performance against the 62 day target was 87.3 per cent, a rise of 2.8 per cent on the previous quarter and an increase of 8.1 per cent on the same quarter in 2006.
Ms Sturgeon also revealed that the weekly progress reports she demanded directly from Boards back in May - which provide a reasonable indicator of how Boards are performing on a weekly and monthly basis - suggest that the 12 week rolling average up to mid-November was 93.3 per cent and the four week rolling average also up to mid-November is 95.4 per cent. (It should be noted that these are un-validated figures and experience suggests that we should build in a +/- margin of error of two per cent between these progress report figures and the quarterly official figures.)
Commenting on the latest statistics, Ms Sturgeon said:
"These April to June official figures show that Boards are making decent progress towards the 95 per cent target, but it is clear that much more still has to be done.
"These are the first figures to cover the period after I set out my determination to meet the long overdue target this Government inherited by the end of this year.
"The progress to the end of June is encouraging, and I know that from my conversations with Board management over the past few months, from the weekly progress reports I asked for from Boards, and from the information our Cancer Performance Support Team provide, that they appear to be making progress towards our end of year target.
"I commissioned weekly progress reports in May from each Board to make sure they were taking the right action to meet the end of 2007 target that we - and more importantly patients - were demanding.
"The latest weekly progress reports I have received give me optimism that, with only a few weeks to go until the end of the year, we appear to be on track to deliver on the 62-day maximum wait target across Scotland from December 31.
"But we will not be complacent. Cancer patients and their families would expect nothing less. They deserve the best treatment, appropriate to their needs, as quickly as possible, and that is what I have been driving Boards to deliver."
Ms Sturgeon also highlighted the role of the Scottish Government's Cancer Performance Support Team (CPST) in helping Boards improve their performance. At the end of this quarter, the CPST was re-directed to NHS Lothian and NHS Lanarkshire. Previous CPST engagement with NHS Highland, NHS Forth Valley and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has helped all these Boards show improvements over previous months.
Ms Sturgeon said: "It is important that we see the poorest performing Boards, and those with the greatest scale of challenge, deliver better performance for cancer patients. The work of the CPST in engaging with target Boards has shown positive results, and I look forward to seeing similar progress from their engagement with NHS Lothian and NHS Lanarkshire."
Shortly after Nicola Sturgeon became Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, she visited the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre in Glasgow (May 29) for a visit which coincided with the latest quarterly (Q4 2006) cancer waiting time figures. On what was her first engagement in the new role, Ms Sturgeon said that is was unacceptable that the 2005 waiting time target for cancer still hadn't been met. (Against a target of 95 per cent patients waiting no longer than 62 days from urgent referral to treatment, the quarterly figures published that day - for Oct to Dec 2006 - showed a Scottish figure of 84.8 per cent). The Cabinet Secretary set out her clear expectation that the NHS should proceed quickly and effectively to deliver on its cancer waiting time target, with a requirement that it meet the 95 per cent target by the end of this year, and that this performance be sustained thereafter.
The statistics for Q1 2007 (Jan to Mar - the last full quarter before the election) were published on August 15, and showed that the overall Scottish position was virtually unchanged at 84.5 per cent (this measurement period preceded the Cabinet Secretary's May pledge). Ms Sturgeon said in May that she expected to see week-on-week, month-on-month improvements, and that she was demanding weekly performance reports from Boards to ensure that progress was being made.
The weekly progress reports, which are a reasonable indicator of how Boards are performing on a weekly and monthly basis, suggest that the 12 week rolling average (un-validated) up to mid-November was 93.3 per cent and the four week rolling average (un-validated) also up to mid November is 95.4 per cent, though experience suggests that we should build in a +/- margin of error of two per cent between these progress report figures and the quarterly official figures.