AN urgent review of access to diagnostic tests for suspected cancer patients is needed in Wales, says the UK's leading cancer charity.

A hard-hitting report published today by Cancer Research UK concludes that in terms of improving and speeding up diagnosis, there are several areas for improvement.

Diagnostic testing capacity, direct access to such tests through GPs, and even access to GPs themselves in some parts of Wales, are among concerns raised in the report, called Where Next For Cancer Services In Wales?

It highlights difficulties in meeting both of Wales' cancer treatment waiting times targets, through the urgent (62-day) and non-urgent (31-day) pathways.

The 62-day pathway requires that a minimum 95 per cent of patients referred with suspected cancer begin treatment within 62 days, and this target has not been met Wales-wide since 2008.

The 31-day pathway requires a minimum 98 per cent of patients whose cancer is detected having not been suspected on referral to begin treatment inside 31 days. This target has not been met since 2014.

The report concludes that poor performance in meeting the 62-day target, compared to the 31-day target, "indicates that patients are experiencing delays in being diagnosed" and calls on the Welsh Government to speed up the introduction of a single pathway to record waiting times from the point of suspicion of cancer.

It is also critical of "relatively limited" progress in earlier diagnosis, highlighting that the proportion of cancer patients diagnosed at stage four only improved by two percentage points, from 21 per cent in 2012 to 19 per cent in 2014.

A successor to the Welsh Government’s Cancer Delivery Plan, which ends this year, is being developed, and the report calls too for an ambitious follow-up plan to cope with growing numbers of people in Wales being diagnosed with the disease.

As well as called for a review of diagnostic services, the report makes nine other recommendations, including:

* One-year survival and five-year survival should reach 75 per cent and 58 per cent respectively, by 2020

* Additional measures of performance should include the proportion of patients seen by a consultant within 14 days of GP referral; the proportion of patients receiving a definitive diagnosis within 28 days of suspicion of cancer: the proportion of patients starting treatment within 14 days of a decision to treat.

* Public Health Wales should consider further public cancer awareness campaigns following an evaluation of the 2016 lung cancer campaign.

* The Welsh Government should reconsider its 2014 decision and introduce a national decision-making panel for Individual Patient Funding Requests (for drugs and treatments), to improve consistency.