Throughout 2025 acute hospital trusts in North Central London have made significant improvements in waiting times for patients receiving news of a cancer diagnosis and starting treatment.
According to the latest available data, North Central London’s 62-day standard performance is the highest in England. This national target means that once cancer is suspected and a referral is made, patients should be diagnosed and start treatment within 62 days. Similarly, for the Faster Diagnosis Standard, for confirming diagnosis or ruling cancer out within 28 days, nationally North Central London stands in second place.
Just a year ago, North Central London ranked 17th out of 21 Cancer Alliances for the 62-day standard and 18th for the Faster Diagnosis Standard. But concerted, collaborative efforts with support from the North Central London Cancer Alliance has enabled each local trust to improve significantly.
Ali Malik, Managing Director, North Central London Cancer Alliance said: ”This is a wonderful achievement. I am so proud of our hardworking clinical and non-clinical colleagues at local hospitals and members of the cancer alliance team who work with them. There are so many pressures on hospitals and waiting times are challenging. But we have shown how a collaborative approach, innovative ways of working and learning from and supporting each other can make a huge difference.”
In North Central London, the success has been made possible through a range of initiatives, including:
- Collaboration to share endoscopy capacity - Known as mutual aid, Whittington Health has helped to ease endoscopy waiting times at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) by delivering additional clinics with their endoscopists at RFL, or by RFL patients being seen at the Whittington hospital.
- Embedding Cancer Alliance Improvement Managers within hospital trusts - Supported by the Cancer Alliance, new roles were embedded into the trusts to lead the delivery of nationally determined services (e.g. teledermatology, breast pain clinics, management of unscheduled bleeding for post-menopausal women on hormone replacement therapy) and a range of projects to redesign cancer pathways or improve programmes. This additional support provides trusts with greater capacity to deliver improvements.
- Whittington Health and Royal Free London cancer pathway and patient tracking list management – Both trusts have improved the resources available within cancer teams to manage patient pathways. This means that more robust mechanisms are in place to monitor where patients are on their pathways and what is causing delays. There is a greater overview of the cancer patient tracking list (PTL), better management in following up diagnostic test results, and more timely communication with patients.
- Royal Free London endoscopy discharge – Communication to patients about non-cancer results directly by endoscopists has been implemented in all RFL health units. In August, this meant that 70% of patients could be discharged following an endoscopy procedure. This replaced a system in which a patient waited for a separate follow-up appointment to receive their results. An improvement workstream also began in September 2025 focused on outpatient processes for both first-time and review appointments.
- Royal Free London nurse-led urology clinic – The prostate cancer diagnostic pathway has been transformed at RFL through an innovative nurse-led model. Developed in partnership with patients and clinical teams, the service speeds up access to MRI, expands specialist nursing capacity and enables nurse-led prostate biopsies, resulting in faster communication of results to patients, and timely decision-making on treatment options. RFL’s urology Faster Diagnosis Standard performance has improved from 50% to 75% in 2025/26. The model is being adopted by neighbouring hospitals and in other urology tumour pathways. It demonstrates how advanced nursing roles can reduce reliance on consultant activity and deliver faster diagnosis.
- UCLH gynaecology one stop clinic - UCLH has been delivering a one stop clinic for gynaecology for about 10 years. This allows for the entire diagnostic pathway from diagnostic tests to giving a non-cancer diagnosis to be completed in one visit for 50% of patients. It means that there is more capacity to ensure that the other 50% receive a diagnosis within 28 days. The model has been shared with and adopted by both RFL and Whittington. North Central London’s gynaecology 62-day performance has improved by 37% in the last 12 months.