A new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) has opened at St Margaret’s Hospital, and welcomed its first patient today (16 March).
The centre will offer health checks and tests to find health problems. These are called diagnostic services. This includes cardiology, respiratory testing and imaging scans such as CT, MRI and ultrasound.
The new centre will help patients get important checks quicker and closer to home. This will help people get diagnosed and treated sooner, and reduce waiting times
Expanded services and equipment
The CDC at St Margaret’s Hospital has new equipment and longer opening hours to boost the number of tests patients can access.
This includes:
- Two more computerised tomography (CT) scanners
- Longer opening hours for X-ray services
- New ultrasound equipment
- New equipment for heart tests
- New equipment for breathing and lung tests
- A new MRI scanner
- More blood testing capacity so that more people can have blood tests
Herts and Essex Hospital will also offer more testing capacity as part of the CDC programme. This includes longer hours for ultrasound, X-ray and hearing services. There will be also more capacity for non-obstetric (non-pregnancy) ultrasound and hearing tests.
All CDC services at both hospitals are available by appointment only. These are not walk-in services.
New clinical pathways to find health problems faster
The new centre will make it easier for patients to get the tests and specialist checks they need more quickly.
These pathways will support finding health problems and monitoring for conditions, including:
- Breathlessness
- Children and young people’s asthma
- Unscheduled bleeding while using hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
- Liver health surveillance checks
- Rapid access care for chest pain
- Palpitations
- Sleep studies
- Tests that use a small camera through the nose to check the food pipe and stomach (trans-nasal endoscopy of the upper gastrointestinal tract)
- Tests to check for prostate conditions
Construction work will continue on an extension to the CDC site. This will create space for more services such as liver scans, an extra space for ultrasounds and X-rays, and an area for camera tests that look at the food pipe and stomach through the nose.
I am delighted to see the St Margaret’s Community Diagnostic Centre ready to welcome its first patient.
Dr Monica Bose, Divisional Director of Planned Pathways, Princess Alexandra Hospital
Our CDC will significantly improve care for our patients, with quicker and more local access to diagnostic tests and treatment close to patients’ homes.
The St Margaret’s Community Diagnostic Centre is integral to our vision for neighbourhood health, with more integrated care for our community, closer to home.
Thom Lafferty, Chief Executive, Princess Alexandra Hospital
Welcoming our first patient is a pivotal moment and marks the beginning of our plans to transform care for our community in the coming years.
The centre’s official opening ceremony is planned for Friday 8 May.
Expanding these services across Essex
The St Margaret’s CDC is part of the national NHS programme to boost numbers of health checks and tests that find health problems. It will also improve access to tests such as scans and heart checks and other tests.
More centres are being developed across Essex to help people find out what is wrong and get treatment faster. CDC’s have already opened in Thurrock and Southend. More centres are under construction in Braintree and Pitsea.
CDCs are bringing services into community locations to help find health problems earlier. This will help reduce pressure on hospital sites and make it easier for people to access care locally.