Characterising the volume and variation of multiple urgent suspected cancer referrals in England, April 2013-March 2018: a national cohort study.

Objectives: To establish a methodology to categorise urgent suspected cancer (USC) referrals in England and use these categories to understand individual patient referral patterns by demographic characteristics, financial year and referral pathway.

Design: Cross-sectional population-based cohort study.

Setting: From Cancer Waiting Times data, linked to demographic information held by the National Disease Registration Service, referral-level data on all USC referrals in England between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2018.

Participants: After restricting records to those with an English postcode at referral and with complete demographic information, 9 524 435 referrals were identified for 7 542 592 patients.

Primary And Secondary Outcome Measures: USC referrals were categorised into first and subsequent USC referrals, based primarily on intervals between referral dates. Our primary outcome was to describe the distribution of referral categories by financial year, suspected cancer referral type and four demographic variables. Our secondary aim was to understand which suspected cancer referral types were found in combination within the first 4 months.

Results: During the study period, 7.5 million people had an USC referral, with one in five having more than one referral, with 9.5 million referrals in total. Referrals were categorised as first (91.1%) and subsequent (8.9%) USC referrals. The relative increase in the number of referrals across the study period was largest (78.2%) for subsequent USC referrals.Subsequent referrals were most common in the gynaecological (10%), lung (10%) and haematological cancer pathways (12%).Suspected lower gastrointestinal referrals were most frequently included in a pair of USC referrals; it was one of the five most common pairings for 14 out of 16 referral type pathways, contributing to 30% of upper gastrointestinal USC referral pairings.

Conclusion: Multiple USC referrals increased in the study period, particularly within a year of the first referral. Common referral pairings suggest opportunities for pathway reorganisation where common non-specific symptoms result in multiple USC referrals.