New rooms go live at Cannock Chase Hospital in bid to cut waiting times
A new Ultrasound facility has opened in Cannock as part of a £15m development to improve patient waiting times – accommodating more than 500 appointments per week.
Four new Ultrasound (US) rooms are now ‘live’ at the Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) at Cannock Chase Hospital.
The new machines form phase two of the CDC, the purpose-built-modular building which hosts four state-of-the-art scanners – two CT and two MRI – costing around £1m each.
The CDC also contains endoscopy and other physiological services and the new rooms will contribute to further improvements in waiting times for patients from Cannock, other parts of South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton.
The US leadership team of Karen Hill, superintendent Sonographer; Tash Smith, deputy superintendent of Diagnostic Radiography and Sarah Davies, imaging assistant team leader, has ensured the opening has gone smoothly.
Lucy Wilcox, head of operational radiology at the The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust said: "The team is really pleased with the new department. It’s been a pleasure working on this project with the US leadership team,”
“As usual, they have gone above and beyond to make this a success. The new facility is a more efficient working environment because all specialties – Ultrasound, MRI and CT – are next door to each other.”
“This development will also move outpatient scanning into the community to support the NHS improvement strategy, freeing up capacity at New Cross Hospital to improve emergency department and inpatient services."
More weekend working will take place as staff work to cut waiting times, with patients now being seen seven days a week.
Tash Smith said: “It’s a much better facility than we had before. Having the three specialities next to each other means we collaborate better as previously it was more fragmented, and it’s also better for training when we bring our apprentices over here.
“We can offer patients more flexibility too because scanning can be done at Cannock and New Cross Hospital.”
Phase one of the CDC opened in March this year and it has its own dedicated staff. The new facility performs around 35,000 scans per year and employs up to 70 colleagues.
