Steve Barclay’s misrepresentation of the cancer crisis has
Aug 16, 2023 14:51:45 GMT
yggdrasil likes this
Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 16, 2023 14:51:45 GMT
betrayed thousands of Britons.
It’s easy to see why the NHS would gladly see any target dropped that shines a spotlight on this lethal state of affairs
One of my favourite cartoons shows two mums standing outside the school gate. “I’m writing a novel,” the first mother announces importantly.
“Me neither,” says the second.
It’s a joke about people who feel that they’ve got a novel in them (almost everyone) and the number who simply haven’t got a clue what producing a novel actually entails (also almost everyone). Believe me, if you’re dressed before 3pm and show any other well-known signs of sanity, then you most certainly are not writing a novel.
Lately, I have found that cartoon coming to mind every time I hear a member of our burnt-out, fag-end-of-days Government announce a new policy or (favourite new word) “pledge”.
“Our small boats plan is working,” says the Prime Minister.
Me neither.
“The Bank of England is still winning the fight to control inflation.”
Me neither
“Getting children back into school was the Government’s top priority during Covid.”
Me neither.
“The biggest reform in NHS history is to save the taxpayer £10 billion.”
Ha ha. Me neither.
Rishi Sunak: “Immigration is not out of control.”
Oh, Rishi! You and me neither.
Let me be clear, as all those obfuscating politicians say when clarity is the very last effect they wish to achieve, our Government is not going to be delivering anything of note between now and winter 2024 when the Conservative Party has a dinner date with Oblivion. (The poisoned fungi starter is highly recommended.) So people have stopped listening, and for good reason. Try saying, “Me neither” every time a Cabinet minister finishes speaking. I find it oddly therapeutic.
Some political failures, though, are too dark for mirthless laughter. On Monday morning, when I heard Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, claim on the radio that “cancer survival rates are improving”, I actually felt sick. I thought of all the desperate Telegraph readers who have contacted me pleading for help. (A mother in her 30s with three small children and a large lump in her breast is just the latest of them.) What a glib, evasive misrepresentation of a national crisis, Mr Barclay. Not just that, but a betrayal of the thousands of men and women who are going to die avoidable deaths because the UK now has pretty much the worst survival rates for common cancers in the developed world.
We went into the pandemic at the bottom of the league tables and, almost uniquely, our cancer treatments were curtailed, and GP referrals decreased, as the NHS became a Covid-only service. Through what sly magic of the statisticians’ art could our survival rates possibly be shown to be “improving”? More likely, we will see a horrifying spike in cancer deaths in the next decade.
This is Health Week on the government’s media grid. With no good news to impart about our calamitous NHS with its 7.5 million (at least) waiting list, Mr Barclay was on the airwaves trying to put the best possible gloss on a decision to scrap two-thirds of cancer waiting-times targets in England. (A move so sublimely cynical it could have come straight out of Yes Minister.) Under the plan, nine targets will be consolidated into three pledges (that weasel word again). Potential cancer patients will no longer have to be routinely referred to a specialist within 28 days which health leaders somehow believe will mean “patients will get better treatment in the longer term”.
Honestly, how stupid do they think we are? One in two people gets cancer and Cancer Research UK says this will increase 30 per cent by 2040. Early diagnosis and fast treatment are crucial. The international accepted goal which saves lives is the 62-day treatment target. That is missed in a staggering four out of 10 English patients. (Oncologists around the world regard British waiting times as a sick joke.) Just four weeks’ delay in starting treatment increases the death rate by 8-13 per cent. At least 100,000 people have seen their cancer worsen or been left with fewer treatment options because of appalling NHS delays over the past decade, according to Macmillan Cancer Support. And some 9,000 cancers were missed as a result of breast-screening interruptions during the pandemic.
Sorry, I know that’s a lot of statistics to absorb. But those 9,000 women – someone’s wife, someone’s mum, someone’s beloved best friend – are dead or dying now. All the Amys and the Nickys and the Jills buried in the unmarked tomb of excess deaths.
It’s mortifying in every sense. But instead of launching a radical new national cancer plan to catch up with superior countries that don’t just allow their citizens to sit on a waiting list until they’ve got Stage 4 (straight to palliative care for you, Sir!), health leaders scratch their heads and exclaim, “I know, if we scrap the pesky targets we won’t be accused of failing to hit the targets any more. Simples!”
Denial and deceit are their watchwords. The cancer waiting times for April, published on 8 June, were awful, but NHS England continues to insist that everything is tickety-boo. Nothing to see here. Failure in our cancer care has become so normalised that hardly anyone bothers to scream and shout about the obscene number of missed chances to save lives which make the UK such an outlier in the civilised world.
Radiotherapy UK (#CatchUpWithCancer) was so unhappy about this official misinformation that it made this video:
Two similarly named graphs – Diagnostic Target and Treatment Target – are easily confused. Not least in the minds of government ministers eager for positive headlines, I suggest.
Essentially, there is good news in the first graph about the people who have suspected cancer and the length of time they have to wait between urgent GP referral and the next step on the pathway (90 per cent are given the all-clear). Diagnosis has improved. The really bad news is that, once diagnosed, patients are unlikely to get chemo or radiotherapy for far too long. In March, April and May, almost 19,000 people with cancer waited more than 62 days to start treatment – the worst delay on record.
There are two possibilities here. Either the Government is lying, and knows it is lying, about “improvements” in cancer care, or ministers are being fed cherry-picked stats by NHS panjandrums which present a reassuringly rosy picture of a historic crisis. As Professor Pat Price, chair of Radiotherapy UK and co-founder of the #CatchUpWithCancer campaign points out: “Even if we make some modest headway in identifying cancer patients quicker, we will just be adding those newly-diagnosed patients to a long and potentially fatal waiting list.”
To take one recent example, Rishi Sunak spoke eloquently about lung cancer care but, when he was questioned about treatment capacity, the Prime Minister reeled off the improvement in diagnoses instead. Does the PM not understand that early detection is pretty useless if patients then have to sit in a long queue while their cancer spreads like a forest fire? Early stage lung cancer is curable, that’s the scandal here. Even before Covid, though, a UK audit of 2019 showed 24 per cent of those curable, early-stage lung cancer patients received no treatment at all when they should have had radiotherapy.
You can understand why the NHS would be very happy to see any target dropped which shone a spotlight on that lethal state of affairs, can’t you?
Previously, the Government claimed the strikes are the problem, now it’s the targets which are the problem. Next week, it’s the naughty patients’ fault for getting cancer in the first place. And in the run-up to a general election too. Some people have no consideration!
The real problem is the massive, lockdown-induced backlog which doctors cannot cope with due to long-term underinvestment in staff and equipment. Poor performance won’t get better by “simplifying” cancer targets – an exercise about as likely to improve survival rates as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
But, hey, at least Steve Barclay will be able to claim that one pledge has come good, so that’s alright. Does the Health Secretary have any idea how bad things really are? Shockingly bad, according to Prof Price. Or is he too busy playing petty party politics, pointing out how the NHS in Labour-run Wales is even more disastrous than NHS England? A proud boast indeed.
A few weeks ago, I spoke to another caring oncologist who admitted he is now reduced to reading the scans of his own cancer patients. He is not trained to do that specialist job, but such is the shortage of radiographers that NHS scans are being sent to India. It can take an age for results to come back. Time that cancer patients simply don’t have.
No wonder Prof Price and other luminaries in the field are so angry and despairing. Banging her head against a wall of institutional obduracy, Prof Price has good ideas as to how staff in radiotherapy could deploy modern machines to treat patients faster and also more cost-effectively (the sums required are not large in comparison with the overall budget) but a letter to SOS from 34 heads of UK radiotherapy departments from a year ago still goes unacknowledged. Ditto the furious appeals from Prof Karol Sikora to utilise three world-class Rutherford Health Suites which languish unused when they could be giving state-of-the-art treatment to 20,000 people a year.
Let me apologise again for spelling this out in such onerous detail. I know it’s not an easy read, but I want people to know the truth.
Beyond a certain point, and where such a huge potential loss of life is concerned, politicians reshuffling targets to spare their blushes about the cancer crisis is no longer merely negligent or cynical. It’s downright wicked. This is that point.
We may believe this Government is good for nothing, but some noble work may yet be done. A national cancer plan with a rapid expansion of treatment capacity that puts us on course to deliver the same outcomes as our European neighbours would be a legacy well worth leaving.
Seriously, Mr Barclay, what better use of your remaining time in office is there than saving thousands of lives? Send not to know for whom the bell tolls...
“Asked on Radio 4 about Prof Price’s claim that he was ignoring her warnings about the dire state of cancer care, Mr Barclay said he was ‘very happy to have a meeting’.”
Me neither.
www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/15/nhs-cancer-crisis-waiting-lists-steve-barclay-rishi-sunak/
Allison Pearson actually speaking some sense! Mind you, her "solution" would probably be privatisation.
It’s easy to see why the NHS would gladly see any target dropped that shines a spotlight on this lethal state of affairs
One of my favourite cartoons shows two mums standing outside the school gate. “I’m writing a novel,” the first mother announces importantly.
“Me neither,” says the second.
It’s a joke about people who feel that they’ve got a novel in them (almost everyone) and the number who simply haven’t got a clue what producing a novel actually entails (also almost everyone). Believe me, if you’re dressed before 3pm and show any other well-known signs of sanity, then you most certainly are not writing a novel.
Lately, I have found that cartoon coming to mind every time I hear a member of our burnt-out, fag-end-of-days Government announce a new policy or (favourite new word) “pledge”.
“Our small boats plan is working,” says the Prime Minister.
Me neither.
“The Bank of England is still winning the fight to control inflation.”
Me neither
“Getting children back into school was the Government’s top priority during Covid.”
Me neither.
“The biggest reform in NHS history is to save the taxpayer £10 billion.”
Ha ha. Me neither.
Rishi Sunak: “Immigration is not out of control.”
Oh, Rishi! You and me neither.
Let me be clear, as all those obfuscating politicians say when clarity is the very last effect they wish to achieve, our Government is not going to be delivering anything of note between now and winter 2024 when the Conservative Party has a dinner date with Oblivion. (The poisoned fungi starter is highly recommended.) So people have stopped listening, and for good reason. Try saying, “Me neither” every time a Cabinet minister finishes speaking. I find it oddly therapeutic.
Some political failures, though, are too dark for mirthless laughter. On Monday morning, when I heard Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, claim on the radio that “cancer survival rates are improving”, I actually felt sick. I thought of all the desperate Telegraph readers who have contacted me pleading for help. (A mother in her 30s with three small children and a large lump in her breast is just the latest of them.) What a glib, evasive misrepresentation of a national crisis, Mr Barclay. Not just that, but a betrayal of the thousands of men and women who are going to die avoidable deaths because the UK now has pretty much the worst survival rates for common cancers in the developed world.
We went into the pandemic at the bottom of the league tables and, almost uniquely, our cancer treatments were curtailed, and GP referrals decreased, as the NHS became a Covid-only service. Through what sly magic of the statisticians’ art could our survival rates possibly be shown to be “improving”? More likely, we will see a horrifying spike in cancer deaths in the next decade.
This is Health Week on the government’s media grid. With no good news to impart about our calamitous NHS with its 7.5 million (at least) waiting list, Mr Barclay was on the airwaves trying to put the best possible gloss on a decision to scrap two-thirds of cancer waiting-times targets in England. (A move so sublimely cynical it could have come straight out of Yes Minister.) Under the plan, nine targets will be consolidated into three pledges (that weasel word again). Potential cancer patients will no longer have to be routinely referred to a specialist within 28 days which health leaders somehow believe will mean “patients will get better treatment in the longer term”.
Honestly, how stupid do they think we are? One in two people gets cancer and Cancer Research UK says this will increase 30 per cent by 2040. Early diagnosis and fast treatment are crucial. The international accepted goal which saves lives is the 62-day treatment target. That is missed in a staggering four out of 10 English patients. (Oncologists around the world regard British waiting times as a sick joke.) Just four weeks’ delay in starting treatment increases the death rate by 8-13 per cent. At least 100,000 people have seen their cancer worsen or been left with fewer treatment options because of appalling NHS delays over the past decade, according to Macmillan Cancer Support. And some 9,000 cancers were missed as a result of breast-screening interruptions during the pandemic.
Sorry, I know that’s a lot of statistics to absorb. But those 9,000 women – someone’s wife, someone’s mum, someone’s beloved best friend – are dead or dying now. All the Amys and the Nickys and the Jills buried in the unmarked tomb of excess deaths.
It’s mortifying in every sense. But instead of launching a radical new national cancer plan to catch up with superior countries that don’t just allow their citizens to sit on a waiting list until they’ve got Stage 4 (straight to palliative care for you, Sir!), health leaders scratch their heads and exclaim, “I know, if we scrap the pesky targets we won’t be accused of failing to hit the targets any more. Simples!”
Denial and deceit are their watchwords. The cancer waiting times for April, published on 8 June, were awful, but NHS England continues to insist that everything is tickety-boo. Nothing to see here. Failure in our cancer care has become so normalised that hardly anyone bothers to scream and shout about the obscene number of missed chances to save lives which make the UK such an outlier in the civilised world.
Radiotherapy UK (#CatchUpWithCancer) was so unhappy about this official misinformation that it made this video:
Two similarly named graphs – Diagnostic Target and Treatment Target – are easily confused. Not least in the minds of government ministers eager for positive headlines, I suggest.
Essentially, there is good news in the first graph about the people who have suspected cancer and the length of time they have to wait between urgent GP referral and the next step on the pathway (90 per cent are given the all-clear). Diagnosis has improved. The really bad news is that, once diagnosed, patients are unlikely to get chemo or radiotherapy for far too long. In March, April and May, almost 19,000 people with cancer waited more than 62 days to start treatment – the worst delay on record.
There are two possibilities here. Either the Government is lying, and knows it is lying, about “improvements” in cancer care, or ministers are being fed cherry-picked stats by NHS panjandrums which present a reassuringly rosy picture of a historic crisis. As Professor Pat Price, chair of Radiotherapy UK and co-founder of the #CatchUpWithCancer campaign points out: “Even if we make some modest headway in identifying cancer patients quicker, we will just be adding those newly-diagnosed patients to a long and potentially fatal waiting list.”
To take one recent example, Rishi Sunak spoke eloquently about lung cancer care but, when he was questioned about treatment capacity, the Prime Minister reeled off the improvement in diagnoses instead. Does the PM not understand that early detection is pretty useless if patients then have to sit in a long queue while their cancer spreads like a forest fire? Early stage lung cancer is curable, that’s the scandal here. Even before Covid, though, a UK audit of 2019 showed 24 per cent of those curable, early-stage lung cancer patients received no treatment at all when they should have had radiotherapy.
You can understand why the NHS would be very happy to see any target dropped which shone a spotlight on that lethal state of affairs, can’t you?
Previously, the Government claimed the strikes are the problem, now it’s the targets which are the problem. Next week, it’s the naughty patients’ fault for getting cancer in the first place. And in the run-up to a general election too. Some people have no consideration!
The real problem is the massive, lockdown-induced backlog which doctors cannot cope with due to long-term underinvestment in staff and equipment. Poor performance won’t get better by “simplifying” cancer targets – an exercise about as likely to improve survival rates as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
But, hey, at least Steve Barclay will be able to claim that one pledge has come good, so that’s alright. Does the Health Secretary have any idea how bad things really are? Shockingly bad, according to Prof Price. Or is he too busy playing petty party politics, pointing out how the NHS in Labour-run Wales is even more disastrous than NHS England? A proud boast indeed.
A few weeks ago, I spoke to another caring oncologist who admitted he is now reduced to reading the scans of his own cancer patients. He is not trained to do that specialist job, but such is the shortage of radiographers that NHS scans are being sent to India. It can take an age for results to come back. Time that cancer patients simply don’t have.
No wonder Prof Price and other luminaries in the field are so angry and despairing. Banging her head against a wall of institutional obduracy, Prof Price has good ideas as to how staff in radiotherapy could deploy modern machines to treat patients faster and also more cost-effectively (the sums required are not large in comparison with the overall budget) but a letter to SOS from 34 heads of UK radiotherapy departments from a year ago still goes unacknowledged. Ditto the furious appeals from Prof Karol Sikora to utilise three world-class Rutherford Health Suites which languish unused when they could be giving state-of-the-art treatment to 20,000 people a year.
Let me apologise again for spelling this out in such onerous detail. I know it’s not an easy read, but I want people to know the truth.
Beyond a certain point, and where such a huge potential loss of life is concerned, politicians reshuffling targets to spare their blushes about the cancer crisis is no longer merely negligent or cynical. It’s downright wicked. This is that point.
We may believe this Government is good for nothing, but some noble work may yet be done. A national cancer plan with a rapid expansion of treatment capacity that puts us on course to deliver the same outcomes as our European neighbours would be a legacy well worth leaving.
Seriously, Mr Barclay, what better use of your remaining time in office is there than saving thousands of lives? Send not to know for whom the bell tolls...
“Asked on Radio 4 about Prof Price’s claim that he was ignoring her warnings about the dire state of cancer care, Mr Barclay said he was ‘very happy to have a meeting’.”
Me neither.
www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/08/15/nhs-cancer-crisis-waiting-lists-steve-barclay-rishi-sunak/
Allison Pearson actually speaking some sense! Mind you, her "solution" would probably be privatisation.
