In Denmark, the National Integrated Cancer Pathways (“fast track”) was introduced in 2008 as a response to the long waiting times.
We performed a natural experiment of 14,023 cancer patients to compare the length of time intervals before and after the introduction of “fast-track”.
We saw a decrease in time intervals, but the difference in treatment interval was not statistically significant.
The reduction in time intervals seemed to occur before the implementation of ‘fast track’ – indicating that other factors may also have influenced the length of the cancer diagnostic pathways.