New NHS community testing centre in Northampton will aim to reduce wait times for CT and MRI scans

A new NHS community diagnostic centre (CDC) is set to open in Northampton in a bid to reduce wait times for scans like CTs and MRIs.

The centre is Kings Heath is expected to open by early 2024 and will be run by the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, which is a hospital group formed of Kettering and Northampton general hospitals.

The CDC will use some of the existing health centre, in North Oval, with facilities extended as needed. It will deliver CT, MRI and ultrasound scans, as well as echocardiography and blood test appointments. The trust is also investigating how it can further develop other forms of testing at this location.

Another CDC is also planned for Corby. Across the two centres, almost £17 million has been allocated to establish the centres and keep them running.

Director of strategy for the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, Polly Grimmett, said: “The new facilities will be additional to the diagnostic testing currently done within Kettering and Northampton general hospitals and in some of our other community sites.

“The CDC will operate for 12 hours a day and for seven-days-a-week. The additional appointments will help support GPs and hospital staff in diagnosing many potentially life- threatening, or debilitating conditions, at an earlier point. In turn this will help us treat conditions and reduce the risk of emergency attendances in hospital.

“It will also help us to reduce the stress and uncertainty patients face while waiting for the more specialised diagnostic tests like CT and MRI to determine what is wrong with them.”

The work will also be overseen by by NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, which is responsible for health and social care in Northamptonshire – and has involved other partners.

Toby Sanders, chief executive of Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, added: “The Covid-19 pandemic has had a very significant impact on NHS services making it harder for hospitals, and other health services, to keep up with the growing demand for tests.

“In addition, Northamptonshire is one of the fastest growing counties in England so – even without the Covid-19 pandemic – investing in diagnostic test capacity would have been a key priority for us.

“These new centres will be an exciting new way of providing diagnostic tests to our local community closer to their homes. They will speed-up people’s access to tests and play a very important part in the treatment of many medical and surgical conditions.”

It is expected that the new CDCs, once fully operational, will be able to deliver at least 90,000 additional tests each year including 16,000 additional MRI scans and 24,000 additional CT scans. The NHS standard for diagnostic wait times is six weeks but at the moment wait times in Northamptonshire can be up to 20 weeks for MRI and 13 weeks for CT.

It is hoped that the new CDCs – along with continued investment, upgrades, and maintenance in existing equipment and diagnostic resources – will start to reduce wait times for these procedures.

The trust says the aim, initially, is to get down to 85 percent of patients being seen within six weeks by the end of March 2024.