Early Diagnosis 

Earlier and faster diagnosis is dependent on people understanding and being aware of the early signs and symptoms of cancer, by taking up screening programmes or visiting a healthcare professional.

Working closely with patients and the public, Public Health England, CRUK and Macmillan, we will identify and employ a range of interventions to support early diagnosis. In this way we will increase the proportion of patients identified through screening and managed pathways across primary and secondary care, whilst reducing the number of patients diagnosed as an emergency. The emphasis will be threefold:

• Embedding 2015 NICE Referral Guideline NG12.
• Focusing capital investment in our most challenged pathways for meeting cancer waiting times, particularly urology, lung, colorectal, head and neck and upper GI.
• Demographic focus on groups and geographies with poor cancer outcomes.

Our first two interventions funded by Cancer Transformation Funds are:

• Prostate pathway redesign and
• FiT testing in primary care.

Further interventions will include:

• Ensuring the 2015 NICE Guideline NG12 is fully embedded in all GP Practices.
• Improving non 2 week wait (2WW) referral pathways by conducting an Significant Event Audit (SEA) of all emergency admissions with an eventual diagnosis of cancer over the last 12 months.
• Resourcing the cancer centres to run an Significant Event Audit (SEA)  on lung cancer patients who entered the system on a routine pathway.
• Standardising access to straight to test facilities for chest X-rays, CT scans, ultrasound and endoscopy.