A key cancer waiting times target has been missed for more than a quarter of patients, new figures have showed.

The latest figures from Public Health Scotland disclosed that between April and June 2023 only 73.7% of those patients referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer started getting treatment within 62 days.

That target has not been met since the last three months of 2012, more than a decade ago, although figures from the quarter before the Covid pandemic started showed more than four out of five (83.7%) were treated within the target time in October to December 2019.

A total of 4,299 patients were referred with an urgent suspicion of cancer over the period April to June – with this up by 1.6% on the previous three month and 15.5% higher than the last three months of 2019.

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