Southport hospital is in trouble again for breaching waiting list times for live saving surgeries.
Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has breached national waiting time targets for potentially life-saving tests to diagnose bowel cancer.
More than 40 hospitals in the north of England, Yorkshire and the Humber are in breach of the waiting time target for the potentially life-saving tests.
Under NHS rules patients should wait no more than six weeks for a colonoscopy or flexi-sigmoidoscopy, both of which detect the UK’s second biggest cancer early on when it is easier to treat, giving patients a greater chance of survival.
The tests use a camera on a thin, flexible cable to look at different parts of the bowel and detect cancer at the earliest stages and remove pre-cancerous growths, known as polyps.
Figures for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, show 113 patients went on a waiting list for a colonoscopy, while 5.3% of those waited six weeks or more.
Elaine Deeming, Lead Cancer Nurse, told OTS News: “GPs referred 1,617 patients to the Trust with a suspected bowel cancer in the last full year. One-in-20 of such patients will receive a cancer diagnosis.
“The small number of patients waiting more than six weeks for a diagnostic test have usually made the choice to do so themselves.”
Meanwhile, for flexisigmoidoscopy, 60 patients were on a waiting list, 3.3% of which were waiting more than 6 weeks.
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