The length of time people are waiting to find out if they have cancer and for treatment has improved and waiting lists are coming down, a hospital boss said.
George Findlay, the chief executive of University Hospitals Sussex, said: “Colleagues have made significant improvements in how quickly we diagnose or rule out cancer while also reducing the backlog of patients that are waiting for cancer treatment.
“The ‘faster diagnosis standard’ requires 77 per cent of patients to have cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days of their referral.
“Our performance has improved from 65 per cent in August to more than 70 per cent in each of the past four reported months and our provisional current position is exceeding 80 per cent.”
Dr Findlay said: “An overwhelming majority of people referred for a suspected cancer do not have it and so being able to either provide such welcome news or start life-saving treatment swiftly is hugely important.
“Our cancer teams also continue to work tirelessly to ensure more patients are treated within 62 days of urgent referral.
“The standard is 85 per cent although the NHS England expectation was reduced to 70 per cent for 2024-25 and is increasing to 75 per cent in 2025-26.
“We have historically faced challenges with this target following growth in demand and bottlenecks in the diagnostic pathway.
“However, we have agreed on a trajectory of improvement with NHS England and, earlier this month, we reported the smallest backlog since we became University Hospitals Sussex four years ago.”
University Hospitals Sussex is the NHS trust that runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and the Sussex Eye Hospital, in Brighton.
The trust also runs Worthing Hospital, Southlands, in Shoreham, St Richard’s, in Chichester, and the Princess Royal, in Haywards Heath.
Dr Findlay said that waiting lists overall had also been brought down but added that too many people were still not being seen quickly enough.
He said: “The number of patients waiting more than 65 weeks for treatment is the lowest it has been since before the pandemic.
“Our overall waiting list remains too large and I wish to apologise to all our patients who continue to wait for their treatment.
“But it is important we acknowledge the huge improvements staff have made to shorten waiting lists and improve access for patients.
“Since June last year, for example, we have reduced our 65-week waiting list by more than 95 per cent and our overall waiting list by nearly 20 per cent.
So back in 2011 travelling in china . We had a nuclear physicists in our group.
I discussed cancer with her as brother diagnosed. And I was discussing environmental cancer . High in some countries but not in others . Especially regarding Chernobyl and north England cull of livestock contaminated.
She pointed out that within 10 years every one will be diagnosed. Though some not harmful. Well it’s now 1 in every 2 that are tested. So why not test everyone then .
I guess you can’t treat humans like livestock. But we’re living very sick lives . We need to be eating less meat and make sure it’s high quality. If we’re producing livestock faster for the market . Growth hormones . Then that’s what we’re now seeing in humans .
Age of conception much lower these last 30 years .
And then we spread excrement over our crops in the fields . And drink evian water . Which is naive backwards