The plans for an 'NHS testing village' which takes 'weeks off' serious diagnosis wait times

A pop-up NHS testing ‘village’ which takes ‘weeks off’ the time taken to diagnose ‘serious’ illnesses for Oldham residents is to be made permanent and offer even more screening options.

Oldham council granted permission for a temporary community diagnostics centre to be set up on vacant land in Royton in December 2021 for a period of up to five years. Now the planning committee has given the green light for the diagnostic ‘village’, which has already seen 25,000 patients, to be kept permanently on the Salmon Fields site.

And the centre, one of 40 being set up around the country, it is to be expanded with additional health facilities, including a modular CT scanner, and a PET CT scanner with a control room. Director of planning and delivery at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, Barney Schofield told councillors they had already seen a ‘benefit’ from the first phase of development.

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“Over 25,000 patients have now had diagnostic tests in the building that’s already there on the site. The patient feedback has been extraordinarily high,” he added. “Patients find the site preferable to battling our hospital sites when they only need a simple test.

“And it’s allowed us to take weeks and weeks off the time it takes us to diagnose serious illnesses and in many fewer visits for patients because we can deliver more tests on the same day in this facility. This application seeks to add new diagnostic capabilities to this site, so we’ll see even more patients. We’re confident it’s much needed.”

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