Tamworth MP 'delighted' about investment in new Community Diagnostic Centre which sees thousands of patients every month
Sarah Edwards, MP for Tamworth, visited the new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) at Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital, to see the cutting-edge facility supporting local residents to get access to diagnostic tests quicker and closer to their home and community.
Sarah joined University Hospital of Derby and Burton's (UHDB) Chief Executive Stephen Posey and Chair Prem Singh for a walk around the hospital and new diagnostic centre, which is completing around 800 diagnostic tests every week.
The state-of-the-art centre will offer an expansion of services including more capacity for ultrasounds, x-ray, audiology, a new mobile MRI scanner, a mobile CT scanner and other new services to deliver point of care testing and blood tests. Work is in progress to introduce respiratory and CT services in the near future however patients can still access these at Queen's Hospital Burton.
The CDC is delivering almost double the number of diagnostic tests with almost 26,000 tests completed since April 2024, compared to 13,000 tests in the year 2023/24. Once fully up and running, the centre estimates to deliver 70,000 tests every year.
During the visit, the MP also spoke with colleagues on the Philip Ward and Andrew Ward at the hospital about their work during winter and said she is delighted to see the investment into the hospital that will benefit people in Tamworth.
Sarah said: "The development of the new community diagnostic centre should have huge benefits to constituents across Tamworth. The design and consideration that has gone into the variety of services has the potential to drastically improve the speed of diagnosis and access to treatment. Basing multiple specialisms together will provide a more integrated experience.
"With more constituents able to get quicker access to appointments locally I am delighted at the investment that has come to the Sir Robert Peel Community Hospital."
The Tamworth hospital has one of five community diagnostic centres in the region, with a new centre at Ilkeston Community Hospital now open and fully operational and another at Florence Nightingale Community Hospital which is expected to open in Spring 2025. There are also CDCs at Whitworth Community Hospital and Walton Community Hospital.
The centres are part of a £29.9m investment to create ‘one-stop shops’ that improve local population health outcomes by bringing essential diagnostic testing closer to local communities that need them the most. The centres are strategically located to support communities with challenges accessing hospital diagnostic services and experiencing health inequalities and deprivation.
Patients can get tested sooner, which means they can access their results and care faster, helping to improve their health outcomes. This innovation will be incredibly important to support the local healthcare system with distributing the existing demand on hospital diagnostic services across more community services and reducing hospital pressures particularly during winter pressure and peak seasons.
Stephen Posey, Chief Executive at UHDB, said the development of the CDCs will help to reduce pressure at the Trust's acute sites at Royal Derby Hospital and Queen's Hospital Burton, and serve local communities by providing our patients with quicker and more convenient access to tests.
Stephen said: "The development of the community diagnostic centres will deliver real benefit to our communities. As well as allowing us to offer faster access to tests, closer to home, it will help us to reduce waiting times for those having planned operations and support in receiving quicker cancer results too.
"The centres co-ordinate all the diagnostic tests a patient requires and, wherever possible, provide them under one roof in a single visit, which means a faster diagnosis and faster treatment for our patients. This is a real investment in health and our teams are pleased to be supporting such valuable improvements in the services we offer local people."
The creation of these CDCs is part of the strategic aim to increase people’s access to diagnostic tests, reduce health inequalities by making diagnostic tests easier to access and improve outcomes in conditions such as cancer, stroke, heart disease, respiratory diseases, which are part of NHS England’s NHS Long Term Plan.
You can find out more about the Community Diagnostic Centres here >