Diagnostics Next steps and future plans for CDCs
Following the publication of the APPG for Diagnostics report, the government announced a further 19 new community diagnostic centres (CDCs) will open this year. Among the latest developments is a new £15m development at Cannock’s Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) due for roll-out this spring. A purpose built-modular building hosting four
state-of-the-art scanners costing around £1m each – two CT and two MRI machines – will be available at the CDC at Cannock Chase Hospital, part of The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT). It means patients in Cannock and South
Staffordshire will be scanned closer to home, avoiding them having to travel to New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton or Walsall Manor Hospital. The new facility will: l Take around 30,000 images per year. l Employ 70 new staff, making it one of the largest substantively-staffed NHS facility of its type in the UK.
l Occupy 580 square metres of space. A walkway will connect the scanners – which will
Charlotte Wickens concluded: “The expansion
of diagnostic capacity is welcome news for the many thousands of patients waiting for a scan or test. More important than the number of CDCs is their ability to speed up access to scans and tests, and on this measure, they are yet to realise their potential… There is a long way to go in terms of building capacity before meeting the ambition of 17 million tests by March 2025. “CDCs also had a wider ambition to deliver diagnostics differently, in a way that tackles health inequalities and moves access to diagnostics into underserved and deprived communities. “However, setting up CDCs in the community
has proven to be expensive and many have been set up on existing NHS sites rather than in new and more accessible locations. This means CDCs may not be as responsive to health inequalities and deprivation as they were intended to be. “With the total number of appointments for
tests standing at 1.5 million in England, it is perhaps not surprising that the desire to bring down this list trumps the parallel ambition to deliver diagnostic activity differently. “But by deprioritising this ambition, there is a risk that limited staffing and financial pressures, coupled with the proportionately small volume of activity being delivered, CDCs may be sidelined in the future, in favour of traditional diagnostic provision.”
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www.clinicalservicesjournal.com I March 2024
have their own reception and waiting area – to the main hospital building. Designed and delivered by Health Spaces Limited, a hospital estates and design consultancy, the project has been under construction since May 2023. Glen Whitehouse, Group Manager, Diagnostic
Services, Radiology Department at RWT, said: “This department is a massive investment in our Radiology service. “We’ve been really careful to make sure all of our support facilities are right so patients get an excellent experience as soon as they walk through the door. But we also want to make sure it’s a really nice space for staff to work in. “All of our CT and MRI scanners have Artificial
Intelligence (AI), which on the CTs ensures we get the very best image quality at the lowest X-ray dose. On our MRI scanners, this means we’re focused on making the image quality as good as possible but ensuring the scan times are as quick as possible too. We also have the ambient lighting experience, because sometimes it can be unsettling to have an MRI scan – particularly for children.” With 30,000 patients expected to use the
References 1. All-Party Parliamentary Group for Diagnostics. CDCs Unveiled: Challenges & Triumphs; an Inquiry into Community Diagnostic Centres. Accessed at:
https://www.rcpath.org/static/ c131184d-fc49-4b75-837303c677817071/APPG- for-DiagnosticsCDC-Report-Jan-2024.pdf
2. MTG, Tackling the Elective Backlog: A Spotlight
facility annually, it will make a “massive” difference locally, said Glen. “We can really optimise patient care away
from the acute site, meaning shorter waiting times and a better overall experience.” In phase two – which is due to start after
this April – four new ultrasound rooms will be built. This will ultimately deliver around 29,000 appointments per year. Radiology is just one element of the CDC
– other diagnostics taking place at Cannock include respiratory physiology, cardiac diagnostics, endoscopy, X-rays and phlebotomy. The CDC is one of two in the area covered by
the Black Country Integrated Care System. The other CDC at Corbett Hospital is part of The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, in Stourbridge.
Report on the Implementation and Impact of Surgical Hubs and Diagnostic Centres. Accessed at:
https://mtg.org.uk/campaigns/ spotlight-reports/#dejareview2023
3. MTG, MTG Manifesto – MedTech the Solution Improving patient access to medical technology. Accessed at:
https://mtg.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2021/11/MTG-Manifesto.pdf
SCAN ME
To view the full report
from the APPG for Diagnostics, visit:
http://tinyurl.com/5n8csjnn
To view the full report from MTG, visit:
http://tinyurl.com/27z38whs
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