England failing to close the gap on cancer care

A review by the Health Foundation of the government’s record between 1995 and 2015 has suggested that England is still lagging behind the best-performing nations when it comes to cancer care, despite 20 years of trying to improve, and said that if services improved, 10,000 lives each year could be saved.

Professor Sir Mike Richards who led the review, said that patients were encountering too much difficulty getting access to scans and tests. He added that the number of missed opportunities was the equivalent of a “jumbo jet of people falling from the sky every two weeks”.

He went on to say “Although progress has been made, the aims of all these strategies have not been achieved.”

Although cancer survival rates have improved over the last eighteen years, other nations have also improved but at a much higher rate, and the review found that the UK’s performance rated poorly against Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada and Australia.

Sir Mike said that GPs were under pressure to limit their patient referrals and that the NHS did not have sufficient staff or equipment to carry out all the scans and tests that it should. The report said that tackling these issues would require major investment.

The government have recently promised extra funding for the NHS, around £20bn extra a year by the year 2023, and cancer care has been identified as a key focus for the funding The prime minister recently promised a new strategy ensuring that 75 per cent of cancer cases were diagnosed early, the rate is currently only 50 per cent.

Sir Mike has said that these steps would help to close the gap, but he also called for more to be done to increase awareness of the symptoms to look out for. Research has shown that throughout the UK, people are generally reluctant to come forward when they are showing signs of cancer.

The Department of Health and Social Care said that an improvement in early diagnosis was a “key priority” and added that from next year, a new four week diagnosis target would be rolled out.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Paralegal, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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