Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) - such as the one at Finchley Memorial Hospital - have delivered over 4 million checks, tests, and scans for patients across the country since July 2021, cutting waiting lists and giving patients quicker access to care.
This milestone represents significant progress on the Government’s pledge to open 160 CDCs by March 2025, with a further eight new sites announced and due to open before the end of the year. These will provide capacity for more than 742,000 extra tests a year once fully operational, bolstering access to care.
The Government is also investing £2.3 billion to transform diagnostic services, with 108 CDCs already up and running and a further 41 due to open. GPs can refer patients to a centre so they can access lifesaving checks closer to home, rather than travelling to hospital, and be diagnosed for a range of conditions.
The centres are not only more convenient for patients but are also more efficient for staff and free up clinicians’ time to help further cut the waiting lists. The NHS successfully met the first target in its Elective Recovery Plan to virtually eliminate waits of over two years and has cut 18-month waits by over 91% from the peak in September 2021.
Other steps are also being taken to tackle NHS backlogs and boost patient choice. Last month, the Government announced that patients will be empowered to choose where they receive hospital care. Currently just one in 10 patients exercise their right to choose but research shows that giving patients choice can cut up to 3 months off their waiting time by selecting a different hospital in the same region.
This Government is determined to deliver on its pledge to “cut NHS waiting lists”, one of the 5 People’s Priorities set out by the Prime Minister at the start of the year.
---