THREE health boards have failed to meet a target on the number of cancer patients being treated within the target times.
In the NHS Grampian area, 92.2% of patients started treatment within two months of being urgently referred in October to December last year; the Scottish Government's target is to treat 95% of patients within this timescale. NHS Shetland and NHS Fife also missed the target, with 94.4% and 94.5% of people treated in that time respectively.
NHS Grampian had the longest waiting time, 195 days, for treatment for someone referred because of suspected cancer. It was also the only health board in Scotland not to meet the 95% target of starting treatment within 31 days of a decision being made on patient care, with this happening for 93.9% of patients there.
Nationwide, 96.9% of patients began their treatment within 62 days of urgent referral for suspected cancer.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said NHS staff had made a "fantastic effort" to meet the overall targets before schedule last year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article