Please note this is a historic project conducted when NDRS was situated in Public Health England (PHE). This content will not be updated. You can contact the team at [email protected] if you have any questions.
Introduction
This website presents the secondary care diagnostic interval (SCDI), in days, for patients diagnosed in England in 2014-2015 recorded as having a relevant first event (or start point) in the 6 months leading up to diagnosis.
The SCDI is defined as the time in days between a patient's first event with secondary care and their diagnosis date. The first event is derived from one of the following event types:
- referral onto an urgent suspected cancer pathway
- referral to secondary care appointment
- secondary care appointment
- relevant diagnostic test appointment in secondary care
The earliest occurring of these events in the 6 months immediately preceding diagnosis is selected as the first event.
For further information on the SCDI and caveats around the data please refer to the 'Information' tab. The full methodology is described in the standard operating procedure: CAS-SOP: Defining the Secondary Care Diagnostic Interval using AV_Tumour linked data available from the downloads section below.
This work has been produced as part of the Cancer Research UK - Public Health England Partnership.
This work was undertaken as part of the CRUK-PHE partnership. Data for this study is based on patient-level information collected by the NHS, as part of the care and support of cancer patients. The data is collated, maintained and quality assured by the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service, which is part of Public Health England.
1. Analysis for all routes
Explore variation in SCDI for each of twenty-five cancer sites by demographic factors and geography.
OPEN ALL ROUTES GEOGRAPHY DASHBOARD
OPEN ALL ROUTES DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS DASHBOARD
(Please note both links open in a new window)
2. Analysis by route
Please use this interactive tool to explore variation in SCDI interval length by demographic factors and geography.
OPEN ROUTE ANALYSIS GEOGRAPHY DASHBOARD
OPEN ROUTE ANALYSIS DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS DASHBOARD
(Please note both links open in a new window)
Data download
This work uses cancer registration data as a base to identify the cohort of patients, and is linked to a number of national data sets to identify the start and end points of the SCDI. The data focus on the six-month time period immediately before diagnosis date to strike a balance between identifying the earliest occurring relevant secondary care diagnostic event while minimising the inclusion of events unrelated to the cancer diagnosis.
Last edited: 4 February 2025 11:50 am
