NHS England has stated most CCG Cancer Services require improvement
Ambitious goals set out by the Cancer Taskforce has highlighted that the majority of clinical commissioning groups (CCG) in England are required to improve their cancer services. If achieved, an extra 30,000 lives could be saved by the year 2020.
With the aim of improving the standard of patient care, NHS England has reviewed of (remove?) 209 CCGs to provide an overview of their performance on six clinical priorities including cancer, by looking at aspects such as waiting times and diagnosis.
According to the data, two-thirds of CCGs are failing to ensure that 85 percent of cancer patients begin treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral and over half are missing one-year survival targets.
There is also a significant need for improvement in cancer diagnosis as the majority of CCGs reported that 40-60% of cases were diagnosed at an early stage.
“NHS cancer patients’ care is now the best it’s ever been, but we’ve set stretching goals to save thousands more lives by 2020. Measured against this ambition it’s not surprising that most local services need to make further improvements, but we’re going to track progress transparently so everyone can see how we are improving care and outcomes for patients,” said NHS England.
“On top of current funding, this year we are also investing an extra £15m in improving early diagnosis and setting up Cancer Alliances to bring together leadership across local areas to drive improvements.”