Study: Wait times for cancer treatment have gotten longer in recent years

The wait time between diagnosis and treatment has gotten even longer for patients with several types of cancers.

A retrospective study published Aug. 12 in JAMA Surgery found that, from 2012 to 2023, wait times increased for patients diagnosed with Stage 1 through Stage 3 breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric, or esophageal cancer. All patients in the study had gone through a surgical resection.

While this study didn’t examine the effects delays may have had on patients’ health outcomes, other studies have shown that longer wait times are associated with poorer outcomes, Tsion Minas, a cancer researcher and instructor in pathology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, told Healthcare Brew.

“The trend is a bit concerning…It’s definitely going to have [an] impact,” Minas said. “For some cancer types, it could have a very detrimental impact.”

Breaking down the numbers. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Massachusetts General Hospital used the National Cancer Database to analyze more than 2.7 million patients.

They found the median time from diagnosis to first-course therapy—either surgery or a neoadjuvant therapy—increased over the study period from:

• 34 to 45 days for breast cancer
• 20 to 31 days for colon cancer
• 41 to 53 days for lung cancer
• 23 to 32 days for pancreatic cancer
• 35 to 49 days for gastric cancer
• 38 to 48 days for esophageal cancer

Wait times were found to be longer at academic medical centers compared to community hospitals as well as for patients who were referred to get care at a different location than where they were diagnosed.

“Cancer care is becoming more and more complicated—there are immunotherapies, these advanced surgeries, robotics,” Minas said. “Not all the community hospitals can actually perform those or deliver those therapies.”

Wait times were also longer for Black patients, low-income patients, those with Medicaid insurance, those living farther away from medical centers, and those living in the West, the study found.