Patients across north Cumbria are now waiting less time for treatment as data shows improvements in performance for the last quarter of 2025/26.
The latest national statistics published by NHS England for February, alongside provisional internal data for March, show a clear upward trend across emergency care, diagnostics, cancer pathways and Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting times. Despite rising demand, patients are being seen more quickly and waiting lists are reducing.
Below represents the provisional performance position against our key performance indicators for the end of March. The final position will be confirmed in early May.
Elective Waiting List (RTT)
Since December we have seen our overall waiting list reduce by 10% from 39,107 to 35,309 at the end of March. Within the same period, we have seen our RTT performance improve to 64.28% of patients waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment. This is an improvement of 8% within one quarter.
Diagnostics
NCIC has received national recognition for being the most improved Trust in the country for the diagnostics six-week wait standard between December (47.0%) and February (27.7%) with sustained improvement to the end of March (23.95%). This represents an improvement by 23% in reducing the number of patients waiting over six weeks for a diagnostic.
Cancer
Cancer performance continues to improve overall with the Trust meeting the 96% standard for 31-day decision to treat.
The 28-day standard for an urgent referral to diagnosis or discharge has also continued to improve to 60% and the 62-day standard (urgent suspected cancer referral to first treatment) improving to 64.6%. We have seen significant improvements in some of our most challenged tumour groups which included for skin cancer 96.7% of patients receiving treatment within 62-days and Upper GI 87.5%. The cancer long waiting patients (over day 62) has also significantly reduced from 641 in September to 138 in March.
These improvements reflect sustained effort from clinical teams across multiple specialties.
A&E
Our A&E and Urgent Treatment Centres continue to experience significant pressures with on average 11,000 attendances per month.
Even with this level in demand, waiting times improved compared to previous months. With our £4m investment into urgent and emergency care and the planned opening of the UTC at CIC, we hope to further improve performance in the coming months.
Trudie Davies, Interim Chief Executive at NCIC said:
“National and regional bodies have recognised the significant performance improvements made by NCIC over the past few months in all clinical services. The Trust continues to climb the performance standards rankings against peers and in recognition has been invited to share our improvement methodology with Trusts across the region. This lays the strong foundations required to continue to improve the quality of services and care we provide for our patients into 2026/27.”