Community diagnostic centres hit four million NHS health checks landmark

The NHS’ network of ‘community diagnostic centres’ (CDCs) has now carried out some four million health checks, tests and scans for conditions such as cancer, heart and lung disease, the government has said.

The network of 108 community centres has been rolled out across the NHS in England since July 2021, as the health service has looked to reduce the post-pandemic backlog, with the centres based in a range of locations, including shopping centres, train stations, retail parks and university campuses.

GPs can refer patients to a centre, where they can have MRI scans, X-rays, and respiratory checks without having to take up a hospital outpatient appointment.

The government is aiming to expand the network to 160 of the facilities by March 2025, with a further eight due to open before the end of this year, health secretary Steve Barclay has said. These will provide capacity for more than 742,000 extra tests a year once fully operational, NHS England has calculated.

The eight new centres will be located in Scarborough, Ripon, Oldham, Manchester, Clacton, Plymouth, Lincolnshire and Hull.

Barclay said: “We have already made significant progress in bringing down waiting lists – one of the government’s top five priorities – and community diagnostic centres are a key part of this, with over four million vital checks delivered so far.”

NHS national director of elective recovery Sir James Mackey added: “These ‘one-stop shops’ play a key role in the NHS’s elective recovery plan, and the new CDCs are a welcome addition to more than 100 existing community diagnostic centres, which have already delivered more than four million tests and checks.

“Our elective recovery plan set out how the NHS will deliver nine million more tests and checks per year by 2025, and the work of these diagnostic centres – some in convenient spots including shopping centres – are excellent examples of the innovative work being done across the health service to ensure patients get the tests and checks they need as quickly as possible,” he said.

Separately, NHS England has said that double the number of patients are now receiving NHS cancer checks in England now than they were a decade ago.

An analysis of screening figures has shown 114,108 more people were checked for cancer in April than in the same month a decade ago.

In April 2013, there were 103,952 urgent referrals for cancer, which has skyrocketed to 218,060 in April 2023, it calculated.

Likewise, November last year saw the highest-ever number of checks for cancer being carried out in one month – more than a quarter of a million (264,391) – this had more than doubled on a decade ago (107,122 in November 2012), the service said.

Finally, new HIV transmissions in England have fallen by almost a third since 2019, according to an update on the HIV Action Plan for England.

The update meant that England is on track to meet the ambition set in January 2019 to reduce new HIV transmissions by 80% in 2025 and end new transmissions by 2030, the Department of Health and Social Care said.

Cases of diagnosed HIV have fallen by almost a third from 2019 to 2021, and by more than a fifth for AIDS.

As well as the fall in new HIV transmissions in England, increased testing is meaning fewer people now remain unaware of their HIV.

NHS England is investing £20m in the three years from 2022 to 2023 to 2024 to 2025 to expand blood-borne viruses opt-out testing in emergency departments in the local authority areas across the country with the highest prevalence of HIV.

These are London, Brighton, Manchester, Salford and Blackpool. The report showed this expanded testing has helped diagnose 2,000 cases of blood-borne viruses – including 343 people living with HIV – in the first year of the programme.