Summary
Rossendale Community Diagnostic Centre is a spoke building and is one of only four community diagnostic centre (CDC) hubs already up and running in Lancashire and South Cumbria. Established to help deliver services in the heart of the community and support the reduction in the NHS elective care backlog following COVID-19, the hub will only increase over time and create further significant additional diagnostic capacity within the area. Increased provision across East Lancashire will help patients get a diagnosis quicker and reduce cost for the NHS.
Background
An additional spoke site, the CDC spoke has been established to support Burnley General Hospital after originally offering endoscopy and non-obstetric ultrasound.
The building is in the centre of Rossendale, East Lancashire, which lies south of the major towns of Burnley and Blackburn. Placing services at Rossendale Primary Health Care Centre will allow the ICS in the area to deliver place-based care which helps to reduce the NHS elective care backlog. It allows patients to be treated closer to home and reduces the need for them to travel and attend appointments at busy major hospitals locally.
Rossendale was chosen as a state-of-the-art health centre rooted in the local community with several key advantages. CHP buildings offer value for money within fit for purpose, modern facilities. Not only is Rossendale an example of this core message, it offered lead-lined rooms, necessary for diagnostic x-ray and CT scans but already had endoscopy facilities and several consulting rooms available.
The development of CDCs will further support the recovery of elective and diagnostic services that were impacted during the pandemic, which will in turn reduce waiting times and diagnostic backlogs. As a hub, it offers value for money, good IT connectivity, excellent local transport connections and facilities on site that are already purpose built for delivering place-based diagnostic care. These include consulting rooms and lead-lined rooms alongside space for mobile imaging units outside which could offer MRI, CT scans and breast screening. The Primary Health Care Centre is also open from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and offers longer opening hours which was one of the original principles of community diagnostic centres. There is further potential for the centre to open on the weekend, should demand increase.
The Challenge
Burnley and Hyndburn are both ranking in the lowest 10% of deprived areas in England whilst the area of Pendle, local to the centre, is in the lowest 20%. Rossendale itself is within the 20% most deprived areas in the country for employment deprivation which means 3 of the 5 most deprive neighbourhoods in the Lancashire area are in the Borough of Burnley (Source: Lancashire County Council).
The statistics show that the building is in an area of high health, and economic, need so the challenge was to not only meet national diagnostic targets but to provide faster diagnoses to patients in the most deprived areas of Lancashire and South Cumbria without the need to travel to hospital.
The Solution
Following the integrated care plan delivery, the CDC has been established by Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board and East Lancashire Hospitals Trust and is run on a day-to-day basis by East Lancashire Hospitals Trust.
The CDC opened in August 2021 with a MRI unit on one of the external imaging pads outside the centre. It supports proactive and timely delivery of diagnostic services that help the population that aid early diagnostics. Since its inception, more has been added including non-obstetric ultrasounds which will be shortly followed by x-ray, cardiology and respiratory services.
Together, the Rossendale and Burnley General Hospital CDCs have delivered more than 24,284 additional tests to patients in the area between August 2021 and March 2023. The target from April 2023 – March 2024 will include an additional 35,000 appointments.
Although there was an x-ray machine in the building, this has been upgraded from a floor-standing to a ceiling-mounted unit. This has meant reinforcing the ceiling in the room. The new equipment is more advanced and efficient and will allow radiographers to x-ray more people.
The CDC developments have thus far been a great successful at Rossendale and there is scope to add further services and appointments should they be needed.
Rossendale is a fantastic example of what we want a CHP building to be, a modern healthcare facility within the heart of the community. The centre provides for an area that is clearly in need and we look forward to continuing the development of this excellent building.
Find out more about delivering a Community Diagnostic Centre in an existing core asset.
Contact the CHP CDC team.
