Can we hit 75% on the 62-day cancer standard without hiring more coordinators?

Yes, if the bottleneck is data visibility, not workforce. Most Trusts that miss the 62-day standard have adequate clinical capacity but poor pathway tracking. Patients fall through gaps between referral, diagnostics, and MDT. Automated pathway tracking that flags patients at day 40 (not day 55) gives coordinators enough runway to intervene.

The 75% standard is an NHS Constitution requirement, with Cancer Waiting Times payment adjustments applied where performance falls below threshold. CQC inspection teams examine 62-day performance as evidence of clinical governance and pathway management capability. The pathway gaps occur at three transition points: GP urgent referral to first outpatient appointment, which should take no more than 14 days but where 20% of patients experience 18+ day waits due to outpatient scheduling bottlenecks; outpatient to diagnostics, where CT and MRI capacity constraints create scheduling dependencies that can add 10–18 days; and MDT to treatment decision, where MDT meeting frequency (some Trusts still have 14-day gaps between meetings) and theatre availability interact to delay treatment start.

The common thread is that each gap is invisible until the patient is already at risk. A patient whose GP referral was received on day 1, who was seen in outpatients on day 16, who had a CT scan on day 32, and whose MDT is scheduled for day 48 is a near-certain breach — but appears on no report as a problem because each individual step is within tolerance. Only the cumulative pathway position reveals the breach risk, and cumulative position tracking requires linking data across multiple systems that were never designed to communicate.

Most Cancer Waiting Times pathway tracking systems show where patients currently are on the pathway — their most recent completed step. They do not show where patients will be in 7, 14, or 21 days based on currently outstanding pathway steps. A patient at day 38 with an MDT scheduled for day 48, no surgery date booked, and a typical surgery-scheduling-to-procedure lead time of 12 days is a near-certain breach. They will not appear on any exception report until day 55+ when they become an imminent breach — leaving fewer than 7 days for any intervention.

The 62-day reporting data submitted to NHS England Cancer Waiting Times shows compliance percentages by tumour group and by Trust — but does not surface the pathway delay point. A Trust at 68% could be failing primarily at the referral-to-outpatient stage (a scheduling problem), at the diagnostics stage (a capacity problem), or at the MDT-to-treatment stage (a theatre availability problem). Each has a different solution, but the national reporting data does not differentiate between them.

Implement a day-40 automated alert for every patient on a 62-day pathway who does not have a confirmed treatment date. Day 40 is the critical intervention point — with 22 days remaining, a coordinator can still secure an urgent MDT slot, expedite diagnostics, and book a treatment date within the window. At day 55, the options are typically limited to a breach avoidance conversation with the patient about urgent private treatment or a formal breach declaration. The day-40 alert transforms this from a reactive breach management exercise into a proactive pathway completion task.

Build a forward-look algorithm that calculates each patient's expected treatment date based on outstanding pathway steps and current average wait times for each step. This algorithm, applied daily across the active pathway list, identifies patients whose projected treatment date exceeds day 62 before they reach day 40 — giving even more runway for intervention. The coordinator task list generated from this algorithm contains exactly the cases requiring action today, eliminating the time spent manually reviewing every pathway to identify the high-risk cases. This data-driven triage of coordinator workload is the mechanism by which 75% compliance is achievable without additional headcount.