£15m new unit gives Cannock Hospital four brand new scanners
Cannock will have its own scanners for the first time when its new £15m development opens at Cannock Hospital (CDC) this spring.
A purpose built-modular building hosting four state-of-the-art scanners costing around £1m each, two CT and two MRI machines, will be available at the Community Diagnostic Centre, part of The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT).
It means patients in Cannock and South Staffordshire will be scanned closer to home, avoiding them having to travel to New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton or Walsall Manor Hospital.
The new facility will ake around 30,000 images per year, employ 70 new staff, making it one of the largest substantively-staffed NHS facility of its type in the UK and occupy 580 square metres of space
A walkway will connect the scanners, which will have their own reception and waiting area, to the main hospital building.
Designed and delivered by Health Spaces Limited, a hospital estates and design consultancy, the project has been under construction since May 2023.
Glen Whitehouse, Group Manager, Diagnostic Services, Radiology Department at RWT, said: “This department is a massive investment in our Radiology service. We’ve been really careful to make sure all of our support facilities are right so patients get an excellent experience as soon as they walk through the door. But we also want to make sure it’s a really nice space for staff to work in.
“All of our CT and MRI scanners have Artificial Intelligence (AI), which on the CTs ensures we get the very best image quality at the lowest X-ray dose. On our MRI scanners, this means we’re focused on making the image quality as good as possible but ensuring the scan times are as quick as possible too."
He added: "We also have the ambient lighting experience, because sometimes it can be unsettling to have an MRI scan – particularly for children. You can select a theme, pick a colour and watch TV while being scanned. If you want to feel like you’re under water, we can make that happen."
The funds to support this development is part of a national programme for elective recovery to improve waiting times for diagnostics through NHS England.
With 30,000 patients expected to use the facility annually, it will make a “massive” difference locally.
Glen added: “We can really optimise patient care away from the acute site, meaning shorter waiting times and a better overall experience. Taking team feedback, we sketched out what we wanted and the architects designed it based very much on that drawing.
"Staff had a ‘walk through’ virtual tour to make sure everything was as they expected. They were keen to see dual control rooms, and both CTs and MRIs have that. They also wanted more natural light, so that’s been maximised.”
In phase two, starting in April, four new ultrasound rooms will be built. This will ultimately deliver around 29,000 appointments per year.
Radiology is just one element of the CDC – other diagnostics taking place at Cannock include respiratory physiology, cardiac diagnostics, endoscopy, X-rays and phlebotomy.
The CDC is one of two in the area covered by the Black Country Integrated Care System. The other CDC at Corbett Hospital is part of The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, in Stourbridge.
