Timeliness matters: improving lung cancer care with timed targets

Delays in lung cancer care have serious consequences, reducing survival, limiting treatment options and causing significant distress.

Timed targets, which set time frames for diagnosis, treatment and other aspects of care, offer a practical way to improve outcomes and accountability. While they are widely used in some health systems, they are often inconsistently defined, poorly implemented or not met in practice.

Because countries use different definitions and measurements of timeliness, and only a few national audits have examined lung cancer care in detail, it is difficult to establish agreed timed targets or best-practice care.

Drawing on a review of the literature, case studies, and insights from Network members and other experts, our policy brief outlines that delivering timely lung cancer care firstly requires healthcare systems to determine who experiences untimely care and why, remove system-level barriers to timely care, and build policy frameworks that make improvement sustainable.

It provides recommendations for the development and implementation of timed targets for lung cancer care, which include:

• understanding lived experiences to inform realistic targets
• strengthening health system organisation to reduce delays
• establishing supportive policy frameworks to enable implementation.

The brief is designed as a resource for policymakers and health system decision-makers to set clear, context-appropriate targets, address resource gaps and bottlenecks, and monitor performance over time.