· Crawley to be one of 19 new national Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) to deliver more life-saving checks, tests and scans and speed up diagnoses for local patients
· New Elective Recovery Taskforce to help unlock spare capacity in the independent sector to bust the Covid backlogs and reduce waiting times
· First meeting of Elective Recovery Taskforce to be held at 10 Downing Street today
Henry Smith MP has welcomed confirmation that the Government has approved Crawley as the location of a new Community Diagnostic Centre, which will see patients benefit from quicker access to treatment and lifesaving diagnostic tests close to home.
This follows the launch of a new Elective Recovery Taskforce and approval of 19 new one-stop shops across England for tests, checks and scans, including in Crawley, the Health & Social Care Secretary, Steve Barclay, announced today.
Henry said;
“As we recover from Covid-19 one of the key healthcare issues I’ve continued to pursue is the need to address the backlog in cancer services.
“Action is being taken to achieve this and a new Community Diagnostic Centre in Crawley will be an important factor in enhancing cancer support locally.
“As a member of the Cancer All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), the founder and current Vice Chair of the Blood Cancer APPG, and a Vice Chair of the Radiotherapy APPG these are causes I’ll continue to highlight with Government.”
The NHS has made progress in tackling the Covid backlogs and this taskforce will help deliver on the remaining targets.
The launch comes as the Health & Social Care Secretary announced the locations of 19 new CDCs across the country which will help more people to easily access life-saving checks, tests and scans – and follows record investment into health and social care with the Autumn Statement committing up to an additional £8 billion for health and social care in 2024-25.
The Health & Social Care Secretary, Steve Barclay, said;
“The NHS is facing an unprecedented challenge to tackle Covid backlogs.
“Hardworking staff have made strong progress but I want to turbocharge our current plans to bust the backlog and help patients get the treatment they need.
“The taskforce will look at sensible steps to utilise all existing capacity to slash waiting lists while ensuring the NHS always remains free at the point of use.”
The taskforce, which will meet for the first time at Downing Street today, will be chaired by Health Minister Will Quince and made up of academics and experts from the NHS and independent sector to advise the Government on ways to turbocharge NHS recovery from the pandemic, reduce waiting times for patients and eliminate waits for routine care of over a year by 2025.
Experts will focus on how the NHS can utilise existing capacity in independent sector to cut the backlog. The independent sector has been used to bolster NHS capacity and ease pressure at critical times for nearly two decades, delivering over 450,000 appointments in October alone, approximately 6 per cent of NHS care. Commissioning of independent sector services by the NHS uses existing budgets and comes at no extra cost to the NHS, delivering value for taxpayer money.
The taskforce will bring together a group of experts to work on a series of recommendations which will be put to the Government early next year on how the NHS can better commission the independent sector, supporting the NHS as it pulls out all the stops to tackle the Covid backlogs.
Specialties including ophthalmology and knee and hip replacements have led the way with successful collaboration with the independent sector meaning patients can return to their normal lives faster.
The taskforce will look to improve communication and collaboration between the NHS and independent sector, clearly setting out what theatres, beds and other settings (such as outpatients) are available in the independent sector. Maximising use of all additional capacity will support patients and ensure the NHS always remains free at the point of use.
The Minister for Health & Secondary Care, Will Quince, commented;
“We are relentlessly focussed on tackling waiting lists and busting the Covid backlogs and this new taskforce will bring together experts from across the healthcare system.
“Doing so will ensure we’re using all the capacity available to us to improve care across the NHS and independent sector, and give patients more autonomy over when and where they are treated.”
The National Director of Elective Recovery of NHS England, Sir James Mackey, added;
“NHS staff are working incredibly hard to tackle the Covid backlog at a time of immense pressure on the health service with significant progress already made – virtually eliminating two year waits for care - and it’s vital that we continue to support staff to deliver for patients.
“By maximising opportunities to deliver even more life-saving checks and tests, building on the successes of increasing use of the independent sector since the pandemic, we can speed up diagnoses and continue to bring down waiting lists for routine care.”
The Chief Executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, David Hare, commented;
"We strongly welcome the establishment of a new taskforce to look at how the NHS can turbo-charge its use of the independent sector to tackle the elective care backlog.
“For decades independent sector capacity has been used by the NHS to improve patients’ access to care free at the point of use, and giving patients a legal right to choose an independent sector provider for their treatment was a big factor in getting NHS waiting times down in the 2000s.
“The taskforce is a great opportunity to learn lessons from that period and in particular to make good on patients’ legal right to choose the best provider for them, whether public or independent sector, and to ensure that the capacity and capability which is available in the independent sector is being fully utilised for the benefit of NHS patients.”
The new diagnostic centres will be located in the heart of communities across the country including football stadiums and shopping centres offering a range of services including MRI, CT and x-rays, making tests more accessible for patients. They will take the total of approved CDCs to 127, over 80 per cent of the Government's intention to open up to 160 CDCs to perform up to 9 million additional tests a year by 2025.
91 are already up and running across the country and new data shows the one-stop shops, backed by £2.3 billion in Government funding, have delivered over 2.4 million tests, checks and scans since July 2021. These are speeding up access to services for patients and reducing waiting times. In September CDCs delivered 11 per cent of all diagnostic activity, a significant step in achieving the Government’s ambition for 40 per cent of diagnoses to take place in CDCs by 2025.
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