August 13, 2026
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The wait times between diagnosis and the start of treatment for six cancer treatments increased by about two weeks between 2012 and 2023, new research shows.
Cancer patients are having to wait longer to start treatment after being diagnosed, according to a new study.
The research, published Wednesday, found the average wait time between diagnosis and first-course treatment for six types of cancer increased by roughly two weeks between 2012 and 2023. Possible reasons for longer waits include growing physician shortages, the often lengthy prior authorization process and complexity of treatment, the researchers said.
"What was striking was the consistency," Tim Donahue, the study's senior author and a surgical oncologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told STAT. "Across every cancer we studied, patients are waiting longer today than they were a decade ago."
The researchers analyzed data for more than 2.7 million patients in the National Cancer Database. These patients were eligible for surgery when they were diagnosed and had one to three of the six cancer types — breast, colon, lung, gastric, pancreas and esophageal cancer.
Over the course of the 11-year study period, wait times to start cancer treatment rose as follows:
| Cancer Type | 2012 Wait Time | 2023 Wait Time |
| Breast | 34 days | 45 days |
| Colon | 20 days | 31 days |
| Lung | 41 days | 53 days |
| Pancreatic | 23 days | 32 days |
| Gastric | 35 days | 49 days |
| Esophageal | 38 days | 48 days |
The number of patients who had "extreme delays" of 60 days or more between diagnosis and first-course treatment also grew during the study period.
High-volume academic hospitals saw the most significantly prolonged wait times, compared with community hospitals. People covered by Medicaid, lower-income patients and Black patients also had longer wait times.
A national shortage of oncologists may be extending wait times, as well as an increase in cancer diagnoses, Dr. Karl Bilimoria, a surgical oncologist at Indiana University who conducted a 2011 study about cancer treatment wait times, told STAT.
The growing sophistication and multi-disciplinary nature of cancer treatments over the past 20 years also may be lengthening the period between diagnosis and the start of treatment, Stanford University School of Medicine surgeons Lia Delaney and Sherry Wren, wrote in a commentary published alongside the new study.
"As cancer care continues to regionalize, efforts to improve quality may inadvertently create barriers to timely treatment unless capacity and coordination evolve in parallel," they said.
