THE health organisation for north Cumbria is not the worst performing trust for meeting cancer treatment targets, councillors have been reassured.

Ioannis Michalakis, the trust lead for cancer clinician at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, was speaking at a meeting of Cumberland Council's health overview and scrutiny committee at the Copeland Cantre in Whitehaven on Friday (July 19).

He said the number of performance standards were reduced from 10 to three from October 1 last year:

  • Faster diagnosis standard: a diagnosis or ruling out of cancer within 28 days of referral (target 75 percent by March 2025);
  • 62-day treatment standard: commence treatment within 62 days of being referred or consultant upgrade (target 85 percent by March 2025);
  • 31-day treatment standard: commence treatment within 31 days of a decision to treat for all cancer patients (target 96 percent by March 2025).

According to his report, the current performance in these areas, as of April 2024, was 65.7 per cent, 62.5 per cent and 95.6 per cent respectively.

He was asked how the figures compared with other health trusts by councillor Carni McCarron-Holmes (Maryport North, Labour) who added: "Is Cumbria the worst?"

Mr Michalakis said Cumbria was not the worst and added: "We are not at the end of the scale, but we are not at the top."

According to his report, because of the current performance position in April, the organisation was placed into a "Tier 2 performance position" where, by working with other regional organisations, additional support is provided to help it improve by next March.

The report states: "This entails fortnightly meetings with our ICB colleagues and NHSE regional team to review, and where appropriate help further develop/improve, our cancer recovery plan."

According to the report the following steps are being taken to improve the trust's performance standards:

  • Cancer data and validation improvement work is ongoing;
  • Pathway improvement work for a number of tumour groups is ongoing, and will realise performance improvement throughout 2024/25;
  • Undertaking gap analysis against best practice timed pathways and developing an improvement plan to support achievement of the Faster Diagnosis Standard;
  • Urology: Ongoing delivery of interventions as identified in service co-designed improvement plan, for example, a plan to align prostate pathway with best practice timed pathway;
  • Skin: building upon current improvement to implement one-stop approach;
  • Lung: implemented protected PET CT;
  • Gynae: Revised triaging implemented and scoping one-stop hysteroscopy;
  • Head and Neck: rolling out one-stop for neck lesions;
  • Tracking: rolling out KPIs for tracking team as part of large scale improvement plan;
  • Weekly meetings set up with regional colleagues to discuss Patient Tracking List and escalate, where appropriate.