Breast screening workforce will not be able to cope with backlog following crisis, unless urgently reinforced
With letters already going out to those affected by the failure, three leading organisations urge the Government to deliver on its pledge to expand screening workforce.
The breast screening workforce does not have the capacity to absorb the thousands of catch-up mammograms required following the serious failure in the Breast Screening Programme, three leading organisations have warned amid calls for long-term reinforcements.
Following an IT error that saw around 450,000 women aged between 68-71 miss their final invitation to routine screening between 2009-2018, the Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt promised that all women affected under the age of 72 would be offered a catch-up screening appointment within six months.
But in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, The Royal College of Radiologists, the Society of Radiographers and leading charity Breast Cancer Now have today warned that the screening workforce is already ‘stretched beyond the limit’ and does not have capacity to cope with the extra workload of catch-up screening on top of the maintaining routine screening for those aged 50-70.
The organisations have urged the Government to deliver on its pledge to take ‘major steps’ to expand the Screening Programme’s capacity, to ensure those affected can be assessed without a disruption to routine screening, or to the two-week wait for those referred urgently with suspected breast cancer.
The letter co-signed by Dr Nicola Strickland (President of The Royal College of Radiologists), Baroness Delyth Morgan (Chief Executive at Breast Cancer Now) and Mr Gareth Thomas (President of the Society and College of Radiographers) reads: