BMJ  2006;332:235 (28 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7535.235

Letter

Waiting for radiotherapy

New initiatives may transform service

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—Dodwell and Crellin analyse the problems of the current radiotherapy service in the United Kingdom.1 Some important initiatives are under way in England and Scotland to make the service workload sensitive.

Faced, in 2003, with Royal College of Radiologists audits2 3 and an Audit Commission report4 identifying a serious deterioration in waiting times for radiotherapy over the previous five years, the Department of Health in England created a standing multidisciplinary national radiotherapy advisory group. This has commissioned streams of work, particularly in estimating and delivering the predicted radiotherapy fraction demand for the next decade and providing flexible, mature staff to deliver it. The government has also sponsored a research project on extending the working day to try to learn from departments that have successfully used this manoeuvre. Initial reports will be available in the first half of 2006.


Figure Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)
 Credit: BSIP/RAGUET/SPL

 

In Scotland, the health department has independently developed a useful model . . . [Full text of this article]

Robin D Hunter, dean of faculty

Faculty of Clinical Oncology, Royal College of Radiologists, London W1B 1JQ robin_hunter@rcr.ac.uk


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