The Prime Minister this week visited the North Bristol Community Diagnostic Centre to meet with radiographers and other staff in celebration of delivering an extra 2 million NHS appointments per year.
Earlier this week (17 February), the Department for Health and Social Care has announced more than two million extra NHS appointments per year have been delivered ahead of schedule.
In recognition of the milestone, PM Keir Starmer took a tour of the North Bristol CDC, where he met with radiographers, endoscopists, nurses and reception staff to talk about their work at the centre.
Reducing waiting lists
The Labour government’s manifesto pledge promised to create more than 100,000 extra appointments, including for chemotherapy, radiotherapy, endoscopy and diagnostic tests per week.
Data released by NHS England has revealed waiting lists have fallen by almost 160,000 since the government took office.
The announcement came ahead of plans to bring in wider NHS reforms through the government’s Elective Reform Plan, which seeks to cut waiting times and improve patient experience through greater access to Community Diagnostic Centres and 17 new or expanded surgical hubs.
As part of this plan, CDCs and surgical hubs are being developed to support reducing waiting lists and enabling more patients to be treated outside of an acute hospital setting.
Starting treatment sooner
Since the opening of the North Bristol CDC in April 2024, more than 30,000 people have attended for diagnostic tests, which in turn means people can start treatment sooner.
Approximately 50,000 NHS patients are expected to be seen in the next year, and the CDC has reduced the number of patients waiting longer than six weeks for diagnostic tests to below the national standard of five per cent or lower.
The North Bristol CDC fully opened in November last year and is open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
It is delivered through a partnership with independent healthcare provider, InHealth, and is their largest site and among the biggest in the country.
Dean Rogers, executive director for industrial strategy at the SoR, warned that while CDCs are welcome additions to the NHS, but that tackling high waiting lists will require greater recruitment of radiographers.
He said: “While the new CDCs came with a budget for equipment, there was no additional budget for staffing. CDCs have therefore had to draw on the existing radiography workforce to fill posts – leaving hospital acute departments chronically understaffed as a result."
(Photographs by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)