Radiotherapy UK analysis, shared exclusively with the BBC, suggests more than 3,000 extra patients would need to start treatment every month – a near 15% increase on current numbers – to achieve the March 2027 target.<\/p>\n
That is likely to grow as referrals keep rising across nearly every cancer type.<\/p>\n
Price says thousands of patients “are going to die unnecessarily, just because the government can’t get their act together to treat people on time”. <\/p>\n
For every month a cancer patient waits before starting treatment, their chance of survival falls by around 10%.<\/p>\n
By the time Alan had his operation, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and the nodule “had grown at an alarming rate”, according to the lung specialist.<\/p>\n
He has since been told the cancer has cleared awaiting his one-year review, but the operation has left him in debilitating pain. “I used to play golf and get out and about. Now I can’t do any of the things I love,” says Alan.<\/p>\n
Roughly 54,000 more patients will need to start treatment within 62 days before 2029 for the government to hit its goal.<\/p>\n
One NHS trust that is gaining traction on its waiting list numbers is Salisbury, but it is still not hitting targets. <\/p>\n
Staff say there is no single fix, just a relentless focus on getting the basics right; making sure patients know about their appointments and turn up, keeping IT systems working, recruiting the right people, making sure surgical lists are full and expanding capacity.<\/p>\n
Much of the visible progress has come through skin and prostate cancer, two of the most common cancers in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Radiotherapy UK analysis, shared exclusively with the BBC, suggests more than 3,000 extra patients would need to start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-765892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}