Cancer: Medical Treatments

(asked on 9th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what clinical information his Department uses to inform policy on tackling the backlog of cancer treatments.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 24th November 2020

NHS England and NHS Improvement use a variety of data sources to focus improvement action on the right areas of the pathway. This data includes published cancer waiting times data giving the official month by month figures on activity, referrals and waiting times, as well as management information which can give a week to week view of activity and the current scale of the waiting list.

Sources of data such as Hospital Episode Statistics and, the timelier but less robust, secondary uses service are used where finer detail on specific treatments or services are available, alongside specific sources of information such as the Radiotherapy Dataset or the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset where appropriate.

Reticulating Splines