Cancer Patients’ Waiting List ‘Will Lengthen’

By JENNY HOPE

WAITING lists for cancer patients needing chemotherapy will lengthen because of rising demand and inefficient hospital services, specialists warn.

In chemotherapy, drugs are used to destroy cancer cells, usually after surgery. Until now the treatment has been administered in hospital using timeconsuming intravenous infusions of drugs. New oral treatments are available, however, which are more convenient for patients as they can be taken at home and could help control waiting lists.

But a report by specialists and charities which make up the Cancer Capacity Coalition reveals trusts are not encouraged to offer oral drugs because under a system called Payment by Results, hospitals get financial ‘rewards’ to maintain old ways of working as the income they receive is linked to them.

Professor Jim Cassidy, of the Beatson Medical Oncology Centre, Glasgow, said patients may not get the oral treatment as hospitals could lose income and possibly staff if they are not administering the drugs.

‘We have to remove these perverse incentives for inefficient treatments,’ he said.

He warned waiting lists are likely to grow because more people are living longer which raises the risk of the disease.

‘There could be a 200 to 500 per cent increase in chemotherapy needed as a result.’