I visited a cancer consultant this morning. He or she must remain anonymous because of the NHS requirement that such people must seek the permission of the NHS press office before talking to a journalist such as myself. Such permision had not been obtained.
He or she tells me that if the press office had been consulted, he or she would have been required to obtain a good idea of what questions would be asked and the interview would have had to be recorded, if it was permitted at all. He or she tells me that a number of his or her colleagues have received official warnings for what they have said to the press and one was threatened - though not in writing - that if he went on talking to the press as he was, his pension rights would be taken away.
You could argue that all this was a matter of an employer requiring employees not to speak out of turn or bad-mouth the employer. But this is a government-run organisation. If it effectively censors the most knowledgeable people within it, then the public remains in ignorance of what is going on. We rely, instead, on the propaganda of the government about the NHS. This means we rely on highly misleading information since the NHS press office is itself now a propaganda machine pushing forward any favourable information it can obtain and putting a veil over anything unfavourable.
According to my informant
one of the things that is no longer mentioned is the waiting time for radiotherapy. Radiotherapy is vitally important. It saves people's lives. It is also time-critical. A tumour that can be destroyed on day one, may well have grown too big after three months to be treatable. So the patient dies.
The waiting time for radiotherapy in many centres in Britain is three months. People die because of this waiting.
The government had a target for reducing the waiting time but found it was failing to get there. So mention of the target has been dropped. I am told that the Department of Health website had the waiting times but, in 2003, on realising that they were not going to meet their target, the waiting time was removed from the website.
I should say that I have not checked this out for myself. This is what I was told by a cancer consultant this morning.
If anyone finds any of this reminds them of Stalinism, he or she is not alone. If anyone is concerned that they might not get timely treatment for cancer on the NHS, he or she is right to be.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS
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A paper published March 2005 (pdf) in the British Journal of Cancer examined treatment times from 1992 to 2001 from the Thames Cancer Registry. From the abstract:
Median waiting times varied from 42 to 65 days across networks of residence, with the adjusted proportion treated within 60 days ranging from 44 to 71%. There was no difference between male and female patients after adjustment for the other factors, particularly site. There was a highly significant trend over time: the median wait increased from 45 days in 1992 to 76 days in 2001, while the adjusted proportion being treated within 60 days declined by almost a half, from 64 to 35%, over the same period.
Posted by: Thersites at December 3, 2005 10:51 AM
"Why set standards if you are not prepared to measure them? "
Because it would show that you are not meeting them?
Posted by: Bishop Hill at December 3, 2005 04:45 PM
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James:
I cannot comment upon the removal of the radiotherapy waiting time website but I think there might be a possibility that the data is still being collected.
The latest waiting times publicly available are from an audit of waiting times in 1998 and 2003 by the Royal College of Radiologists published in 2004, available here.
An application by one Dr Brian Cottier to the Patient Information Advisory Group (PIAG) gained approval on 15 Sep 2003 for an initial 12 months, according to their minutes. This application was to gather data as follows:
The data to be collected was described as follows: This doctor might have some of the information you are interested in, especially if his data collection is still running. Dr Cottier works at the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology, Clatterbridge Road, Bebington, Wirral CH63 4JY. Worth a journalistic enquiry?An interesting point is the reply the Minister of State for Health gave to the Shadow Secretary of State for Health on 8 November, 2005. The question was:
to which the reply was: Why set standards if you are not prepared to measure them? Also, if Dr Cottier is still running his collection then this answer may not be strictly correct.Posted by: Thersites at December 2, 2005 07:00 PM