The new community diagnostics centre at Liverpool Women’s Hospital

New test centre comes to aid of mums-to-be

By Ella Williams

Anew Community Diagnostics Centre is to open in Liverpool Women’s Hospital. The diagnostic centre is a facility able to evaluate a person’s condition, using blood tests and X-rays. Patients across Liverpool can benefit from earlier diagnostic tests closer to home. The Trust has secured a share of £350m national funding to be one of the first 40 new Community Diagnostic Centres, announced by the Government and NHS. The new centre on the Liverpool Women’s Hospital site will provide diagnostic tests for people in the surrounding area, as well as reducing some of the current clinical challenges faced by patients by providing direct access to more diagnostic services on site, rather than requiring patients to travel to other locations. Eva Horgan, Chief Finance Officer at Liverpool Women’s, said: “This new investment will provide essential diagnostic tests to patients in the local area whilst also supporting Liverpool Women’s patients to get access to tests on site that were not possible before.” The centre will help achieve earlier diagnoses for patients through easier, faster, and more direct access to the full range of diagnostic tests needed to understand patients’ symptoms, a reduction in hospital visits which will help to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission; and a contribution to the NHS’ net zero ambitions by providing multiple tests at one visit, reducing the number of patient journeys and helping to cut carbon emissions and air pollution. “Work has commenced on our new Imaging and Colposcopy Unit, and we are delighted to be working in partnership again with Tilbury North. This comes after the completion of our amazing Neonatal Unit and Fetal Medicine Unit (FMU).” The centre will be developed in conjunction with the Crown Street Enhancements Programme. These services are anticipated to be provided by March 2022, followed by CT and MRI scans which are planned to be delivered during 2022/23. The cemtre has been awarded initial funding of over £5m for this programme. When completed, the new centre on the Liverpool Women’s Hospital site will provide tests for a range of patients across the city and will see the Trust working collaboratively with other providers to deliver service. GPs will be able to refer patients to a centre so they can access life-saving checks closer to home and be diagnosed for a range of conditions, 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 of staff including nurses and radiographers and are open 7 days a week. The centres are one of the recommendations from Professor Sir Mike Richards, the first NHS national cancer director, who conducted a review of diagnostic services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan, published last year. There are still details to confirm such as what the new centre will be called, plans for the development phases of the centre, and exact timescales for when services will start to be delivered. The centre have reached out to the public for them to complete a form about their plans to develop CDC o site at the Liverpool Women’s. You can fill this out here: https://forms.office.com/pages/ responsepage.aspx?id=vXA4RxAgV0q6bdtOR889i_R-tMYhTOZCnur2PlwaLKNUMkVXSEswVEhGS-

(Image: LIverpool Women’s Hospital.)