HEALTH bosses have expressed "significant concern" that Bury cancer victims are not receiving initial help quickly enough.

A national target says 85 per cent of people referred by their GPs to cancer services are supposed to get treatment within 62 days, but the figure for Bury residents is 69 per cent.

The treatment is provided by Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust, which runs Fairfield, North Manchester and Royal Oldham Hospitals as well as Rochdale Infirmary, and is also provided by The Christie in Manchester and Royal Bolton Hospital.

The governing body of Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) discussed the issue at a meeting on September 24 after a report gave the problem a risk score of 16 out of 20.

Afterwards, the CCG’s chairman Dr Kiran Patel said: “We have significant concerns about these figures and are working with various organisations to address the issue.

“These are patients who have been diagnosed with cancer or have a suspected diagnosis and time to treatment can be an important factor.

“Delays may be because patients may not be ready for treatment or may have underlying health conditions, or there may have been a significant rise in new patients, or it could be down to information flow.”

Dr Patel said the number of Bury patients to whom the 62-day target applies to was likely to be "in the tens".

According to the report, Pennine Acute has put a recovery action plan and is going through patient lists and looking at the whole process from referral to treatment.

CCG representatives have also met with counterparts from The Christie to discuss the issue.

A Pennine Acute spokesman said the trust is meeting its targets, but patients who need to be treated at several hospitals sometimes experience delays.

He added: "We are always looking to improve our performance across all our cancer waiting times to ensure every patient is seen and treated as quickly as possible.

"In addition, we have recently enlisted the support of the national cancer intensive support team to work with us to ensure we achieve best practice in managing increasing number of patients with suspected cancer."