Hitting targets - and headlines

Published: 04 July 2012

A man of no less repute than Michelangelo reportedly said that “the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it”. Targets in one form or other have been a feature of the NHS for some time now and they have been used, like all statistics, to make a particular point.

So, depending on your political allegiances, you could read that the NHS in Scotland is failing to meet a key target for cancer treatment - or that they have narrowly missed it.

Here are the facts. The Scottish Government set the target of having 95 per cent of patients start treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred if they are suspected of having cancer. In recent news reports, we learned that they missed the cancer patient referral targets for the period of January to March 2012 by 0.2 per cent.

For this period, 97.9 per cent of patients began their treatment within 31 days of a decision being taken on therapeutic intent. This exceeds the 95 per cent target, but it is down slightly on the treatment rates in the previous quarter. For patients suspected of having breast cancer, 99.2 per cent began treatment within two months of referral. However, where colorectal cancer was suspected this happened for only 90.9 per cent of patients.

Make up your own mind what that means: the original statistical data is on the Information Services Division website of NHS Scotland.