{"entity":{"id":"idea-acc-diagnostic-interval-public-registry","kind":"idea","name":"Record and publish the symptom-to-diagnosis interval for every cancer, by hospital","aka":[],"tldr":"How long people wait between first noticing something wrong and being diagnosed is barely measured. Recording it routinely and publishing it by hospital would expose where the system loses time.","summary":"The diagnostic interval is the most patient-relevant delay in cancer care and the least measured. Adding first-presentation date and referral dates to cancer registry minimum datasets, and publishing intervals by route and hospital, would let systems see whether delays occur before referral (primary care), in diagnostics, or in specialist queues. Denmark and England collect parts of this; almost no one else does.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Fragmented care and guideline gaps): Hanna et al., Mortality due to cancer treatment delay: systematic review and meta-analysis (BMJ 2020)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4087"}],"tags":[],"related":["seer"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-care-fragmentation","b-early-detection","b-real-world-evidence"],"keyPapers":["paper-hanna-bmj"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Systems that measure and publish diagnostic intervals will reduce median intervals for the four commonest cancers by at least 15% within three years as bottlenecks become visible and are addressed.","rationale":"What is measured improves; the routes-to-diagnosis work in England showed that emergency presentations and long intervals predict shorter survival, motivating change once visible.","test":"Add the fields to a national registry, publish annually, and compare interval trends with a comparator country without measurement.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"data","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-acc-diagnostic-interval-public-registry/","neighbours":{"collection":[{"id":"seer","kind":"collection","name":"SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results)","route":"/collections/seer/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-care-fragmentation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Fragmented care and guideline gaps","route":"/bottlenecks/b-care-fragmentation/"},{"id":"b-early-detection","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The hardest cancers are found late","route":"/bottlenecks/b-early-detection/"},{"id":"b-real-world-evidence","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Weak real-world evidence and registries","route":"/bottlenecks/b-real-world-evidence/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-hanna-bmj","kind":"paper","name":"Mortality due to cancer treatment delay: systematic review and meta-analysis","route":"/key-papers/paper-hanna-bmj/"}]}}