Rochdale borough residents to benefit from Oldham Community Diagnostic Centre

Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) in Oldham will welcome its first patients later this month

A new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) in Oldham welcomed its first patients this month.

The £10 million centre, located in Salmon Fields, Royton, opened on 19 December and is one of the first six CDCs in the region and one of the country’s largest out-of-hospital diagnostic centres. More than 30,000 patients a year across the local and wider Greater Manchester area will benefit from this facility.

The CDC is part of the government’s £2.3 billion national investment to open up to 160 CDCs by 2025 closer to patients’ homes, helping to diagnose a range of conditions including cancer, heart and lung disease quicker and ensuring patients are treated faster. The new one-stop-shops for checks, scans and tests will provide up to 9 million additional tests a year by 2025.

Oldham CDC will open 7 days a week, 8am to 8pm, and will provide the latest cutting-edge diagnostic imaging technology, heart and lung tests and blood tests. Patients are referred to the centre by their GP or healthcare professional.

Next year will see the opening of a new unit at the Oldham CDC that will deliver endoscopy services. 

Barney Schofield, director of planning and delivery at the Northern Care Alliance said: “This new centre will be a tremendous asset for the people of Oldham and well beyond, helping us to achieve our ambitions of saving lives and improving lives. Too many people wait too long for tests and have to unnecessarily come to a hospital site for a test. The new centre will help us to make great improvements to our patient care.”

The centres will help achieve:

• earlier diagnoses for patients through quicker access to the full range of diagnostic tests needed to investigate patients’ symptoms
• greater convenience for patients, providing multiple tests at one visit, away from busy hospital sites, with free car parking and access by public transport
• a reduction in hospital visits which will help to reduce the risk of infection and provider greater resilience in any future pandemics
• a contribution to cutting carbon emissions and air pollution, by reducing the number of unnecessary patient journeys and traffic congestion in and around hospitals

Minister of State for Health Will Quince said: “We’re delivering millions of extra life-saving tests, checks and scans in the heart of communities with centres like Oldham’s, which is backed by nearly £10 million of government funding, so patients across Manchester can get quicker diagnoses close to home.

“The new facility in Oldham will be one of the country’s largest out-of-hospital diagnostic centres and will include cardiac and blood tests as well as x-rays and MRI which will serve over 30,000 patients every year across the region.”

The Oldham development has involved a number of partners, including the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, Alliance Medical Limited, NHS England, NHS Greater Manchester and Oldham Council.

Richard Evans, Alliance Medical UK managing director added: “Alliance Medical are proud to be partnering with the NHS to deliver this CDC furthering our commitment to support with CDCs across the country. It will not only deliver much needed additional capacity for patients in the community but also allows us to include much needed PET-CT scanning capacity to increase our ability to scan and detect cancers and also scan for other diseases such as Alzheimer’s.”