- Health and Social Care Secretary, thanked NHS staff at two
sites in Warwickshire for their unwavering work busting the
Covid backlogs
- He visited the new Community Diagnostic Centre at George
Eliot Hospital that will further support people access tests and
scans locally and more rapidly
- Visits highlight continued commitment to ensure patients can
get timely, quality care from the NHS
Patients across Warwickshire are benefiting from use of
innovative digital health technologies and the opening of a new
Community Diagnostics Centre to improve access to services and
bust the Covid backlogs.
The George Eliot Hospital CDC, which will open mid-August, will
host a new x-ray suite and dedicated clinical areas, opening up
capacity for up to 12,000 ultrasound scans and 19,000 x-rays each
year. This will speed up appointment times so patients are able
to access treatment quicker, easier, and closer to home.
Visiting the region today (Friday 5 August), Health and Social
Care Secretary went to both the new George
Eliot Hospital, and Manor Park Surgery to thank NHS staff for
their tireless efforts to provide care to their local
communities.
Health and Social Care Secretary said:
With the backlogs due to covid it is vital that we innovate to
speed up diagnosis and treatment. So it was great to see
the state of the art new diagnostic centre in Nuneaton, which
opens in 10 days time, and to discuss with local GPs how this
will also help them deliver improved patient care.
Diagnostic one-stop-shops, like the George Eliot Hospital, are
right at the heart of local communities and are helping to speed
up access to X rays, lung funtion tests, ultrasound, and
endoscopy. By bringing under one roof cardiac and respiratory
diagnosis with access to pathology investigations, it will allow
patients to attend once rather than need repeat visits. It is
also good for staff retention and progression to have these new
facilities with state of the art equipment.
This, combined with other innovations in the region like remote
monitoring at Manor Park Surgery are supporting the NHS on the
biggest catch up programme in history.
The Health and Social Care Secretary also met with radiographers
at the George Elliot hospital who are doing vital work carrying
out diagnostic imaging and intervention procedures to bust the
backlogs and ensure people are being seen quickly. Combined,
CDCs in the Midlands region have delivered 257,239 tests between
November 2021 and 17 July 2022 - which has helped thousands of
people across the region to get tests earlier, speeding up
diagnosis of a range of conditions from cancer to heart or lung
disease, and enabling patients to access treatment faster.
At Manor Court Surgery in Nuneaton the Health and Social Care
Secretary met dedicated staff to discuss what the surgery is
doing to support patients. The practice, which forms part of the
Nuneaton and Bedworth Primary Care Network, told the Secretary of
State about their innovative use of remote monitoring to better
support patients in care homes and those with long term
conditions. Remote monitoring, where patients monitor their
condition via technology and feedback to their doctor home, both
improves patient experience, receiving the care they need from
their home, and frees up valuable time.
Over 280,000 people have already used remote monitoring at home
and in care homes across the country in the last year and
increasing the availability of remote monitoring across the
country could support a further 500,000 people receive
personalised care from home by March 2023.
Dr Catherine Free, Chief Medical Officer at George Eliot
Hospital, said:
By putting X-rays, scans and other tests for a large range of
conditions in the same location we can begin to provide a
one-stop service for patients to improve patient experience and
reduce the time people wait between appointments.
The need for tests to help diagnose and treat patients is
forecast to increase so we need to ensure we have the right
facilities to meet the demand.
This is the first phase of the project and we are waiting to hear
confirmation of funding to complete the second phase of the
project which will bring CT and MRI scans and all the tests for
cancer under one roof, improving outcomes for patients with
cancer and other serious conditions.
Backed by £2.3 billion, up to 160 community diagnostic centres
will be rolled out across the country by 2025, delivering 9
million tests and checks a year.
Over 90 community diagnostic centres are already open across
England and have delivered over 1.5 million checks - including
over 700,000 additional CT, MRI, ultrasound, endoscopy, and
ultrasound tests, with around 30,000 tests a week.
As a result, good progress towards reducing the longest waits is
already being made - the number of patients waiting over two
years for treatment falling by more than 80% since February.
Over the next 3 years, a record £39 billion will be invested in
the health and social care system to ensure it has the long-term
resource it needs while working to bust the Covid backlogs,
reducing patient waiting times and speeding up diagnoses.
