Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of leukaemia patients have received a diagnosis within the 28-day 'faster diagnosis' standard.

For the Faster Diagnostic Standard (FDS), data regarding leukaemia and its sub-types is collected using the following two categories: suspected acute leukaemia; and suspected haematological malignancies, excluding acute leukaemia. The latter category includes non-acute leukaemia when there is a suspicion. These statistics are published monthly and are available on the NHS Cancer Waiting Times website, in an online only format. Performance against the FDS for suspected acute leukaemia in March 2024 was at 74.1%. Performance against the FDS for suspected haematological malignancies, excluding acute leukaemia, in March 2024 was at 56.8%.

For the 31- and 62-day referral to treatment combined standards, data is collected at an International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD-10) level, and NHS England publishes data as an aggregation of these reports, to manage the risk of disclosure. Data regarding leukaemia and its sub-types is reported under cancer type ‘Haematological – Other (a)’. These are ICD-10 codes that are haematological, excluding lymphoma, and this aggregation includes ICD-10 codes C91.0 to C96.9, which includes all leukaemia codes. Further information on the ICD-10 classification is available on the NHS England website, in an online only format.

According to NHS England, the 31-day referral to treatment performance for acute leukaemia, testicular, and children’s cancer is no longer published as a separate category, due to the low numbers of patients seen with these cancers. These patients continue to be included within the numerator and denominator of the 31-day and 62-day all cancer National Statistics, published by NHS England.