“The NHS can’t run at full capacity – bureaucracy is clogging the system” says RTUK chair Prof Pat Price and co-founder of the GCR, detailing the state of cancer care in the UK due to the lack of investing in new technologies, missteps during the pandemic, and unreasonable red tape and tariffs, .
“For instance we’ve got this tariff system in radiotherapy whereby the [hospital] trust actually gets more money for treating patients longer.”
Efficient care is effectively penalised .
Another example, “We’ve only been recently allowed to give stereotactic radiosurgery [which uses precisely focused radiation to treat tumours] for lung cancer, after we made a fuss and wrote to the Government in August and said: ‘We’ve got to all be allowed to do it.’ This has been around for 10 years. The NHS had the kit. But this is bureaucracy, bureaucrats [making clinical decisions], saying you’re allowed to do that, you’re not allowed to do that”.
“The bureaucracy needs to be cast away and just let people get on,’ [Price] says. ‘We don’t need massive breakthroughs in research. How about just treating all the people on time with the standard treatment? It would transform survival in the UK.”
A&E and maternity services were protected during the Covid crisis, NHS’s failure to protect cancer care was a grave mistake in which cancer victims have become collateral victims of the pandemic. The Telegraph cites new analysis suggesting 17 percent of cases are being diagnosed late. “That’s a lot because then you go from curable to not curable.’ [Price] notes that ‘for every four weeks’ delay in treatment, that can mean up to 10 per cent reduction in survival.”
“The NHS is in a big mess, but cancer needs to be back at the top of the priority list. It’s a real watershed moment. Will somebody listen and help?”
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