At the end of last year, the 2023/24 Planning Guidance to the NHS, was published for the NHS for the coming year. A link to this guidance can be found at the bottom of this page.
You will see that the guidance builds on the focus on existing priorities, driving towards the 2028 ambition of 75% cancer diagnosed at stage 1 or 2.
The one area where you may notice some changes is operational performance. Here the Planning Guidance focuses on returning to the Faster Diagnosis standard of 75% consistently by March 2024 and continuing to make progress in reducing the 62day backlog.
Key priorities in the guidance that will set the priorities for the Alliance for the coming year are :
- Implement and maintain priority pathway changes for lower GI (at least 80% of FDS lower GI referrals are accompanied by a FIT result), skin (teledermatology) and prostate cancer (best practice timed pathway)
- Increase and prioritise diagnostic and treatment capacity, including ensuring that new diagnostic capacity, particularly via community diagnostic centres (CDCs), is prioritised for urgent suspected cancer. Nationally, we expect current growth levels to translate into a requirement for a 25% increase in diagnostic capacity required for cancer and a 13% increase in treatment capacity.
- Expand the Targeted Lung Health Checks (TLHC) programme and ensure sufficient diagnostic and treatment service capacity to meet this new demand.
- Commission key services which will underpin progress on early diagnosis, including non-specific symptoms pathways (to provide 100% population coverage by March 2024), surveillance services for Lynch syndrome, BRCA and liver; and work with regional public health commissioners to increase colonoscopy capacity to accommodate the extension of the NHS bowel screening programme to 54 year olds.
