Exclusive: Cancer experts declare ‘national emergency’ as hospitals miss targets on diagnosis and starting treatment
Three in four NHS hospital trusts are failing cancer patients, according to the first league tables of their kind, prompting experts to declare a “national emergency”.
Labour published the first league tables to rank hospitals in England from best to worst since the early 2000s this week. The overall rankings score trusts based on a range of measures including finances and patient safety, as well as how they are bringing down waiting times for operations and in A&E, and improving ambulance response times.
Guardian analysis of the underlying data has found that more than seven in 10 trusts are failing to hit either of the two cancer targets in the tables.
Ninety out of 118 trusts (76%) are missing the first target of ruling cancer in or out within 28 days of urgent referrals in at least 80% of cases.
