Cancer patients are set for faster access to treatment as an additional £10 million has been allocated to help improve waiting times.
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The new money, to be shared among the health boards, will boost the number of operations available, creating extra clinics, and upskilling new staff to speed up the delivery of endoscopy, radiology and chemotherapy treatment to get patients the care they need as quickly as possible.
This builds on the Scottish Government’s £114.5 million National Cancer Plan, to support patients and deliver equal access to care across the country that means anyone can access the best standard of care despite their location or background.
This extra cash is on top of the £10 million that was allocated to Health Boards last year (2020-21) to support the running of cancer services in the face of the pandemic.
This delivered new healthcare staff, additional weekend clinics and operations for the areas that need it most and helped create a brand new Urological Diagnostic Hub in NHS Highland that is already showing signs of improved waiting times.
There are two waiting time standards for cancer in Scotland.
The 62-day standard is the time taken from receipt of urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) referral to start of first treatment for newly diagnosed primary cancers.
Patients can be urgently referred by a primary care clinician or general dental physician; referred through a national cancer screening programme; direct referral to hospital where the signs and symptoms are consistent with the cancer diagnosed in line with the Scottish Referral Guidelines for example self-referral to A&E.
The 31-day standard is from the decision to treat to start of first treatment for newly diagnosed primary cancers, regardless of route of referral. ■
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