Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for patients waiting to start cancer treatment at Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB after an urgent GP referral to meet national targets.

NHS England is taking steps to support Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board through weekly tiering and monitoring of cancer performance and has developed improvement trajectories for each tumour site. Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin are implementing a range of interventions to reduce the backlog of patients awaiting commencement of treatment and to also improve performance against the Faster Diagnosis Standard and 62-day cancer standards.

These interventions include: working with primary care colleagues to fully implement faecal immunochemical testing triage for patients referred on a two-week wait colorectal pathway, in line with operational planning guidance 2023/24; appointment of a clinical lead for the non-site-specific vague symptoms pathway; redesigning its prostate pathway in line with the Best Practice Timed Pathway (BPTP); and undertaking two pilot studies with different primary care networks with the aim of introducing a tele-dermatology service in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.

The integrated care board is also working with NHS England and Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin partners to implement the BPTP, including by increasing capacity in non-obstetric ultrasound and hysteroscopy, both essential early diagnostic tools.

The first Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) will open to patients in October 2023 and will provide additional MRI, CT, ultrasound and cardio-respiratory testing capacity across a range of modalities and provide a hub and spoke model for tele-dermatology services.