Gastrointestinal Cancer: Diagnosis

(asked on 1st March 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure NHS England is meeting the Faster Diagnosis Standard for lower gastrointestinal cancer referrals.


Answered by
Lord Markham Portrait
Lord Markham
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 19th March 2024

The Department is taking steps to achieve the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS), which aims to ensure people with cancer or suspected cancer, including lower gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, are diagnosed or have cancer ruled out within 28 days of referral. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 related backlogs in elective care, which includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.

To achieve the FDS target specifically, NHS England has implemented a timed pathway for lower GI cancer, by requiring faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) for patients in primary and secondary care settings on a suspected lower GI cancer pathway. FIT testing prevents patients from having unnecessary colonoscopies, freeing up capacity for these procedures and ensuring the most urgent symptomatic patients are seen more quickly. Across 2022/2023 the proportion of lower GI referrals with a related FIT test rose from 24% to 69%.

NHS England is also implementing non symptom specific pathways for patients who present with non-specific symptoms, or combinations of non-specific symptoms, that can indicate several different cancers, including symptoms that may indicate lower GI cancers.

In addition, at the 2021 Spending Review the Government awarded £2.3 billion to transform diagnostic services from 2022 to 2025, most of which will help increase the number of community diagnostic centres (CDCs) up to 160 by March 2025, prioritising CDCs for cancer services. General practice teams have also been given direct access to tests like computed tomography scans, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasounds, helping to cut waiting times and speed up the diagnosis of, or ruling out of, cancer. This funding is also being used to expand endoscopy capacity within acute settings and in CDCs.

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