In this report, Audit Scotland has looked at the performance of the Scottish Executive Health Department, the regional cancer advisory groups, the managed clinical networks and the specialist hospital-based bowel cancer services in Scotland, and how they are planning and delivering bowel cancer care. The team visited 26 hospitals, including hospitals from each of the mainland health boards, collected management information and clinical performance data, and conducted interviews with staff to identify good practice and review performance against clinical standards and national waiting times targets.For this study, we also commissioned independent research on the experience of bowel cancer patients.