Government invests in new NHS Community Diagnostic Centre in Barnsley's Glass Works
It's great news that Barnsley is going to host one of 40 new Community Diagnostic Centres that the Government has announced today.
The NHS Community Diagnostic Centre in The Glass Works will be the first of its kind in the country, designed to offer a game-changing service for local people. It will take pressure off local health services and being based in the shopping centres will be in a very convenient town centre location with good local transport and lots of parking.
The centre will provide Barnsley residents with access to ultrasound, X-ray, breast screening, phlebotomy and bone density scans.
We all know that the pandemic has taken its toll on waiting times for NHS services, and to help the NHS recover the Government is investing many millions of pounds in new technology and new facilities to help clear the backlog. Importantly, community-based diagnostics will make it easier for people to access the services they need, and these new centres will act as one-stop-shops for checks, scans, and tests.
GPs will be able to refer patients to the centre so they can access checks closer to home rather than travelling to hospital. This will be more convenient for patients, more efficient, and more resilient to the risk of cancelled tests in hospitals due to COVID-19. The centres will be staffed by a multi-disciplinary team including nurses and radiographers and will be open 7 days a week.
I met with Sheena McDonnell, Chair of Barnsley Hospital, and Bob Kirton, Deputy Chief Executive, and it was fantastic to have the opportunity to talk to some of the centre’s hard-working staff. The diagnostics centre was awarded almost £3m initially and then further funding of over £4 million from the Department for Health as part of a £31m budget to develop centres across South Yorkshire.
Update | the centre opened in April 2022 and has been hugely successful in getting patients the diagnostics they need when they need it.
Additional services have now been introduced, including CT scanning, abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, and URO-Dynamics (bladder) and retinal eye screening.
The CDC development means waiting times for some screenings have been cut - waiting times for DEXA (bone density) screenings are down from six weeks in March 2022 to just one week by October 2022. Waiting times for plain film X-Ray are down from two-and-a-half weeks at March 2022 to one-and-a-half weeks by October 2022, and waits for ultrasound screenings have fallen from six weeks to just two weeks.
This investment is clearly paying off, with major cuts in waiting times so I'll be looking at how i can press for more funding to help even more residents.
