Man's 'nightmare' wait for cancer scan results

A cancer patient says his life is being put on hold because of delays getting scan results.

Walt Benkoff, from Oswestry, Shropshire, has stomach cancer and said it was a "nightmare" waiting to get scanned in the county.

Figures from NHS England show Shropshire has the longest waiting times for CT and MRI diagnostic tests in the country.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust apologised and said it was working hard to quickly make improvements.

GPs said there were not enough radiologists and the delays were not being taken seriously enough.

Mr Benkoff, a retired taxi driver, needs to be scanned every three months as part of his treatment but said it was taking nearly four months to get results back.

"We just don't know where we are - it's frustrating for everybody, for me, for [my partner] Laura - generally it's a nightmare," Walt said.

His partner, Laura Connors, said the long waits were stressful for the whole family.

"You're just waiting to find out is he OK, is he not OK? It's just always there," she said.

"We haven't been on holiday since the cancer journey started five years ago."

Another cancer patient, Richard Deeley, from Priorslee, Telford, said waiting for his scan results had left his emotions "up and down all the time".

"You get very tearful, you get very distant - you hope for the best, but you often think it's the worst," he said.

Mr Deeley said he ended up "counting down the days until those results" with his life left on hold.

"It's the day you want to come quickly but in some ways it's a day you don't want to come at all, as it's quite possible that my life may never be the same again," he said.

Between January and June 2024, more than 4,000 people in Shropshire were waiting longer for scan results than the government's four-week target.

GPs in the county claimed up to two-fifths of their workload was dealing with the delays in hospital treatments and tests.

"We've been trying to raise [the issue] for many, many months now," said Dr Charlotte Hart, clinical director of the Shrewsbury Primary Care Network.

"There are little flurries of activity and things improve for a little bit, and then they get worse again.

"It feels as though [the issue] is not being taken seriously enough."

The government said it was putting record amounts of money into the NHS so cancer could be caught in time.

But Lynn Cawley, from Healthwatch Shropshire, said the waiting was causing anxiety for the patients she spoke to.

"They're worried the delay in getting a diagnosis would mean they don't start their treatment soon enough and that might impact on the length of their life," she said.

The president of the Royal College of Radiologists, Dr Katharine Halliday, said waiting lists were a national issue but the figures for Shropshire were worse than in other parts of the country.

"The problem is we just don't have enough radiologists," she said.

Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust was sorry some cancer patients were waiting too long for scans and results, a spokesperson said.

Efforts were under way to quickly make improvements to those services under the most pressure and extra investment had been made in recent weeks, including more space in clinics, to cut waiting times for care, they added.

"We are committed to doing everything possible [and are] working with partners to offer patients faster access to scans, tests and treatments," they said.

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