Workforce shortages strengthen calls for urgent cancer strategy
Friday 14 June 2024
Several recently published reports paint an alarming picture of long waiting times for bowel cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Latest figures for England released yesterday show that only 53% of people being treated for lower gastrointestinal cancers (including bowel cancer) began their treatment within 62 days of referral. This falls short of the NHS target of 85% which was put in place to protect cancer patients by ensuring they begin treatment within safe timeframes.
The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) has also published their Clinical Oncology Workforce Census for 2023, stating that delays to treatment have almost doubled in a year. The report states that weekly delays for radiotherapy treatment almost doubled from 22% in 2022 to 43% in 2023. They highlight a 15% shortfall in the number of UK oncologists and expect this to lead to increasingly delayed appointments, restricted access to treatment and immense pressures placed on colleagues as greater demands are placed on a retiring workforce.
As the general election approaches, we’re calling on all political parties to commit to a fully funded, long-term cancer strategy to help tackle the workforce and resource shortages to speed up care for patients. Research from the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership has shown that consistent cancer policies do help drive improvements in cancer outcomes.
Dr Lisa Wilde, Director of Research, Policy & Influencing at Bowel Cancer UK said:
“Timely access to treatment for bowel cancer is critical for improving survival rates for the disease. These delays are negatively impacting patients and need to be urgently addressed. We need long term solutions to finally deal with the staff shortages.
“We desperately need a fully funded, long-term cancer strategy that will address these systemic issues and for the next Government to commit to publishing and implement this.”
- Read more about the symptoms of bowel cancer
- Learn more about our campaigning work
- Find out more about how bowel cancer is diagnosed
