THE Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals have hit their government targets for routine surgery and cancer treatment referrals, new figures show.

The success will be reported to the East Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Board next week.

Russ McLean, chairman of the East Lancashire Patients Voices group, said the figures were ‘surprising’ and ‘good news for patients’.

MORE TOP STORIES:

The NHS Constitution sets out that patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from GP referral to hospital treatment including routine ‘elective’ surgery.

Additionally, it states that patients with an urgent GP referral for a suspected cancer should be treated within 62 days.

The latest figures for January 2017 show that the trust overall achieved the 18 week ‘Referral to Treatment Target’ set by the government in all four clinical divisions.

The trust has seen a sustained increase in cancer referrals yet has continued to achieve the standards set for cancer treatment for the last quarter from October to December.

This includes the time limit between referral for an appointment and treatment, 62 days, the time to carry out screening, 62 days, and the time between the decision to treat and provide treatment, 31 days.

The good performance comes despite the well-documented problems over waiting times at the Royal Blackburn’s Accident and Emergency department.

John Bannister, director of operations at trust, said: “The last few months have been extremely difficult in terms of the numbers of patients referred to the trust for investigations and treatment, pressures across the health economy with the numbers of people being admitted, and difficulties discharging.

“Despite this, our staff have worked extremely hard to ensure that our patients receive timely care. They have also looked where standards were not met in the past and taken action to improve performance and the patient experience.”

Mr McLean said: “I am surprised but over the moon that they achieved the targets. These figures are good news for patients.”

“The trust is under huge pressure over A and E waiting times and financially so this performance is surprising.”