Cancer Waiting Times

Changes to Cancer Waiting Times standards and Official Statistics

Following a consultation on the cancer waiting times standards, NHS England have had approval from government to implement changes to the standards from 1 October 2023.

The response to the consultation is published here NHS England » Cancer waiting times review – Models of care and measurement: consultation response

The statistics on cancer waiting times will be updated to ensure that they follow the changed operating framework for cancer, and address responses to the consultation on disaggregation of the standards. These changes will begin from the publication of October 2023 data planned to be published in December 2023. The updates are as follows:

Outputs to give prominence to the headline statistics for the new waiting times standards.
Maintain the statistics published on the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Include breakdowns of the new 31 and 62 day standards by variables which allow derivation of the old 31 and 62 day standards. That is, for the 31 day standard include breakdowns by treatment stage (first or subsequent) and modality (Anti-cancer drug regimen, Radiotherapy, Surgery, Other), and for the 62 day standard by source of referral (Urgent suspected cancer, Breast Symptomatic, Screening and Consultant Upgrade).
Remove the breakdown by admitted and non admitted care from treatment standards.
For the 31 and 62 day standards, provide a more granular tumour type breakdown for a range of cancers by sub dividing the categories currently published. Historic data for the new categories will not be available. The new classification will be such that the old classification for the current 31 first and 62 day urgent suspected cancer will be able to be derived from aggregation of the new categories to create a consistent time series. That is, adopt the following new categories: Lung, Breast, Skin, Lower GI, Prostate, Other Urological, Lymphoma, Other haematological, OG, Hepatobiliary, Head and Neck, Gynaecological and ‘All Other’ cancers.
31-day referral to treatment performance for acute leukaemia, children’s and testicular cancers will no longer be published separately, as no performance standard has been applied to this report for some time and reported numbers are extremely small. Data for these cancers will continue to be included within the wider 62-day referral to treatment data.
Continue to publish total numbers seen following an urgent suspected cancer referral and urgent referral where breast symptoms are exhibited but cancer is not initially suspected. Maintain the time waited bands as currently published for these measures, but cease publication of the % seen within 14 days which was the two week wait performance measure which is being removed from the operating framework.
Publish further management information on the backlog.

NHS England will initially adopt an official statistics badge for all the updated statistical outputs, pending assessment by the Office for Statistics Regulation.

Feedback can be sent through to england.cancerwaitsdata@nhs.net

This section provides information on the waiting times of people referred by GP with suspected cancer or breast symptoms and those subsequently diagnosed with and treated for cancer by the NHS in England.

Introduction

These reports present the validated results of the monitoring of waiting times for cancer services in England. Information on the number of people who attended outpatient appointments within two weeks of an urgent referral by their GP for suspected cancer or breast symptoms. For patients with cancer, on the numbers who started treatment within 31 from Decision To Treat to First Definitive Treatment of cancer and 62 days from receipt of urgent GP referral for suspected cancer to First Definite Treatment of cancer are included for each organisation. The numbers who started some types of subsequent treatments within 31 days are also given for each organisation. Numbers of patients who were not seen or treated within the specified times are also included.

For data to March 2018 / Quarter 4 2017/18, monthly cancer waiting times data was classed as provisional and quarterly data classed as final, therefore the sum of the standalone months in a quarter do not necessarily match the standalone quarterly data.

From April 2018 / Quarter one 2018/19 onwards, monthly and quarterly data are synchronized. Both monthly and quarterly data are first released as provisional data, and subsequently finalised in line with the NHS England and NHS Improvement revisions policy. Each year, there are two revisions to cover from April to September data (published in January), and from October to March data (published in July).

Integrated Care Boards (ICB)

From July 2022 cancer waiting times commissioner data is published by Integrated Care Boards in the main publication outputs. Information by Sub ICB Location is available as a long thin data table in the Data extracts (Monthly commissioner based only) section below.

The difference between the commissioner and provider data

The national levels of activity and performance of commissioner-based statistics on waiting times for suspected and diagnosed cancer patients may differ from the equivalent provider-based national statistics on cancer waiting times.

This is because the commissioner-based statistics only include those patients who can be traced back to an English commissioner using their NHS Number. As a result, the national calculated performance levels may differ slightly between the two datasets.

As the commissioner (Clinical Commissioning Groups and from July 2022 Integrated Care Boards) based statistics are derived from those data submitted by the providers of NHS cancer services, the provider-based National Statistics on waiting times for suspected and diagnosed cancer patients (published at the same time as these statistics) remain the most complete assessment of the performance of the English NHS.

Patient allocation

To March 2019 the allocation was equally divided between first seen and treatment providers.

From April 2019 the allocation of patients on 62 day pathways which involve multiple providers was changed and the rules set out in the national cancer waiting times monitoring dataset guidance, the latest version of which can be found here: Cancer Waiting Times Data Collection (CWT) – NHS Digital

The example document Technical Annex – Patient Allocation (XLSX,48KB) accompanying the publication of April 2019 data shows the impact of this change at the provider level in April 2019. The national figures are unaffected by this change.

Clinical Review of Standards Field Test

Please see note below on the publication of data from August 2019 onwards. Reporting for all providers and commissioners resumed from July 2022 data.

Publication of Cancer Waiting Times data CRS-15 April 2021

28-Day Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS)

The 28-Day Faster Diagnosis Standard are published from April 2021 data in June 2021.

Further information on the policy context is provided here: Diagnosing cancer earlier and faster, 2021/22 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance (PDF) and 2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance (PDF).

Monthly cancer waiting times statistics

From the 13th August 2015, monthly cancer waiting times statistics are published here. All monthly cancer waiting times previous to June 2015 are available in the time series section below.

Monthly Provider based data and summaries
Monthly Commissioner based data and summaries

Quarterly cancer waiting times statistics

Quarterly provider based data and summaries
Quarterly commissioner based data and summaries

Time series with revision

Cancer Waiting Times – National Time Series Oct 2009 – Jul 2023 with Revisions (XLSX, 136KB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Provider Time Series Oct 2009 – Jul 2023 with Revisions (XLSX, 7.8MB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Commissioner Time Series Apr 2011 – Jun 2022 with Revisions (XLSX, 8MB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Commissioner Time Series Jul 2022 – Jul 2023 with Revisions (XLSX, 625KB)

Provisional time series

Cancer Waiting Times – National Time Series Oct 2009 – Jul 2023 Provisional (XLSX, 125KB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Provider Time Series Oct 2009 – Jul 2023 Provisional (XLSX, 6.4MB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Commissioner Time Series Apr 2011 – Jun 2022 Provisional (XLSX, 8MB)
Cancer Waiting Times – Commissioner Time Series Jul 2022 – Jul 2023 Provisional (XLSX, 3.5MB)

An archive of the standalone quarterly provider and commissioner time series files are available via the following pages under the Archived Quarterly Data section. Note, following the synchronization of monthly and quarterly data from April 2018, this information is contained in the monthly provider and commissioner time series.

Quarterly provider based data and summaries
Quarterly commissioner based data and summaries

Data extracts (Monthly provider based only)

The following files are data extracts by month from October 2009 to the most recent available data. These files provide levels of activity by standard, provider and cancer type.

From April 2018 onwards, these flat files initially contained the provisional data, and subsequently finalised in line with the NHS England and NHS Improvement revisions policy.

To March 2019 the allocation of patients on 62 day pathways was equally divided between first seen and treatment providers. From April 2019 the allocation of patients on 62 day pathways which involve multiple providers, the latest data extracts will reflect this change.

From April 2021 the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard (for all routes urgent suspected cancer, urgent breast symptomatic, and urgent screening referrals in aggregate) has been included. This standard is operational from Q3 2021/22. The standard can be identified by selecting ’28 Days FDS’ in column D. Additionally, the header name for column F has been updated to ‘CARE SETTING/REFERRAL ROUTE’ to accommodate the ’28 Days FDS (By Route)’ data.

Data extracts (Monthly commissioner based only)

The following files are data extracts by month from July 2022 to the most recent available. These files provide levels of activity by standard and ICB Sub Location.

Cancer Waiting Times April 2023 – July 2023 Data Extract (ICB Sub Location) – file updated to correct an error (Thursday 14th September 2023)
Cancer Waiting Times July 2022 – March 2023 Data Extract (ICB Sub Location) Final (XLSX, 331KB)

Annual cancer waiting times reports

Annual cancer waiting times reports, giving an overview of activity levels and performance, are available to download from Annual cancer waiting times reports

Management Information

Weekly management information on the cancer 62 day backlog for NHS acute providers is available here: MI on cancer

Further information about guidance and data submission dates

Please visit Cancer Waiting Times section on the NHS Digital website.

Contact us

For further information about the published statistics, please contact us at:

Cancer Waiting Times Team
NHS England
Room 5E15
Quarry House
Leeds LS2 7UE
Great Britain
Email: england.cancerwaitsdata@nhs.net

Alternatively, if you are a patient wishing to discuss your own waiting time experience, you should contact your local commissioner, which you can find on the NHS website.

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