Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust currently has 390 patients waiting beyond two months to start cancer treatment, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

A North London NHS trust is still missing cancer performance targets – with almost 400 patients waiting more than two months to start treatment.

During a Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust board meeting yesterday (Wednesday 2nd) Mark Lam, the trust’s chair, admitted cancer treatment performance data “remain very challenged across the group”.

The NHS trust runs Royal Free Hospital in Camden borough, Barnet Hospital, and Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.

It has now been put on ‘tier two monitoring’ by NHS England for cancer performance while it addresses the backlog. The trust currently has 390 patients waiting longer than 62 days to start treatment.

National guidelines set out that 85% of patients should wait for less than two months (62 days) following a GP’s urgent referral, cancer screening or consultant upgrade, to begin their first cancer treatment.

The backlog of 390 means only 52.3% of patients are receiving treatment within the standard timeframe, well below the 85% NHS target.

Sean Briggs, the trust’s chief delivery officer, said the performance wasn’t “where anybody would want it to be right now”.

It now is aiming to reduce its backlog to 150 patients, which would meet the 85% standard.

Briggs said: “We will not have a good performance in this area until that backlog is at a sustainable level. Every backlog patient, a patient who’s waited over 62 days, when they’re eventually treated will contribute to our performance.

“A sustainable level for an organisation this size would be about 150 patients waiting over 62 days, that allows us to hit the 85% 62-day standard.

“At the moment we’re sitting at 390 and that is too high. For us to really improve in the mid to longer term we need to speed up our responses.”

The top three areas of risk identified by the trust relate to delays in diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients, capacity and performance in emergency departments, and patient flow.

Outside the trust’s cancer performance, elective care, which covers a broad range of non-urgent services, is also an area needing improvement.

For the end of this year and early next the trust aims to have zero patients waiting longer than 65 weeks from the point of referral to starting treatment.

Saying anxiety and mental health risks were a key reason to improve in this area, Briggs revealed the trust had recently made “enormous strides”. He said: “You can see in the report we still have 1,100 patients waiting over 65 weeks [based on data from two months ago].

“However, in the last month the trust has made absolutely enormous strides in reducing that backlog, so as of today [2nd October] the backlog sits at 676 patients, which is a significant improvement.

“The absolute key for us now is to continue that momentum.”

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