Straight to colonoscopy: the ideal patient pathway for the 2-week suspected cancer referrals?

The UK has a higher mortality for colon cancer than the European average. The UK Government introduced a 2-week referral target for patients with colorectal symptoms meeting certain criteria and 62-day target for the delivery of treatment from the date of referral for those patients diagnosed with cancer. Hospitals are expected to meet 100% and 95% of these targets, respectively; therefore, an efficient and effective patient pathway is required to deliver diagnosis and treatment within this period. It is suggested that 'straight-to-test' will help this process and we have examined our implementation of 'straight-to-colonoscopy' as a method of achieving this aim.