Cancer: how the two-week target is a nonsense

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Various folk have reported – with differing degrees of indignation – on Labour’s targeting of cancer sufferers. And I’m sure others will ask the questions about data protection and the misuse of personal data (bearing in mind that you cannot use geodemographics to identify breast cancer sufferers*).

However, nobody questions the essential deception in labour’s “appointment within two weeks” offer.To explain this I’m going to give you a personal story.

At the end of last summer I went to the GP as I had a lump in my throat that wasn’t going away. The GP referred me for an ultrasound scan to establish more information (I joked at the time about her thinking my throat was pregnant). This was duly done and I visited the GP again who referred me to a specialist. All this took around six weeks – a long way outside the target of two weeks.

Except that I wasn’t referred to a “cancer specialist” but (quite rightly) to a thyroid specialist. Who referred me for more tests, two further ultrasound scans and some further tests. In the end, I had my throat cut in January and the (thankfully benign) lump removed. All this on the good old NHS – great doctoring, truly awful bureaucracy and appalling front-of-house service. Took about six moths beginning to end.

I’m not complaining about this process. It seemed entirely reasonable and sensible. I don’t feel hard done by at all. So why have a wholly arbitrary and unreferenced requirement of two weeks? Especially when the doctors can get round it by not describing something as “cancer”!

*Seems to me (as an expert on geodemographics) that Labour are lying on this one