From worst in the country to one of the best: Shropshire hospitals in remarkable turnaround on cancer diagnosis targets
Shropshire's emergency hospital trust has completed a remarkable turnaround in performance - going from the worst in the country to second-best on a key cancer target.
The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) has significantly improved its performance for diagnosing or ruling out suspected cancer within four weeks.
The progress means meaning patients are experiencing shorter waits.
Nearly 86 per cent of patients with suspected cancer referred to SaTH received a diagnosis or had it ruled out within 28 days. The latest figures come from November 2025.
The national 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) performance target is 80 per cent.
SaTH is now the second-best-performing trust in the country for the 28-day FDS after being the bottom placed trust a year ago - 119 out of 119 in February 2025.
As a result of its significantly improved performance, the trust has been removed from NHS England ‘tiering’ oversight and support.
SaTH says it managed the progress by carrying out a phased improvement plan - with the first phase focused on increasing and sustaining the 28-day FDS performance.
Among the improvements made were reducing the time from referral to first outpatient appointment, and timely access to diagnostics – tests and scans such as CT, MRI and Non-Obstetric Ultrasound (NOUS) – with the time from initial cancer diagnostic request to the scan taking place and results being reported back being typically now under 10 days - progress that is critical to early cancer diagnosis.
SaTH chief operating officer Ned Hobbs said: “We have made significant and sustained progress on seeing and diagnosing patients who are referred to SaTH with suspected cancer as quickly as possible. This is down to the determination of our teams to improve our 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard performance for our patients.
“We have much more still to do, and the second phase of our improvement programme is to reduce the time it takes to start treatment following a cancer diagnosis and then sustain this - which is also important.”
Dr Andrew Cowley, consultant and clinical lead for cancer services, said: “This is such positive news for our patients. Waiting for a diagnosis, or to have cancer ruled out, is an incredibly worrying and anxious time for patients and their loved ones.
“This achievement has been the hard work of all the cancer teams, and all supporting services. Each part of the pathway is essential and reducing waiting times by days in all parts of the system has enabled this improvement. I am proud to be the lead, and we will continue to improve cancer services from diagnosis to treatment.”
The second phase of the improvement programme will focus on improving the trust’s 62-day referral to treatment performance, which requires that patients start cancer treatment within 62 days of referral.
The trust said it has so far this year seen an improvement month on month for 62-day performance.
The latest figures, from November, show the trust was at 70.2 per cent and placed 69 out of 122 trusts - up from 112 in February 2025. The national standard is 85 per cent.
The trust said Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care System also had the highest rate of compliance in the country in November for the Faster Diagnosis Standard, with 86 per cent of patients having a diagnosis or cancer ruled out within 28 days of a referral.
