Agenda item

Report of the Chief Strategy Officer, UHCW

The Board considered a Briefing Note, together with a comprehensive presentation at the meeting, which provided an update on the Coventry and Rugby Community Diagnostics Centre (CDC) development.

In August 2022 UHCW NHS Trust was awarded a significant capital investment of £18.4m to develop a CDC for the Coventry and Rugby area as a part of a national diagnostic improvement programme.  The planned development maximises the potential patient benefit by utilising a Hub and Spoke model, and plans have progressed to develop a CDC Hub in the centre of Coventry as well as spoke service at the hospital of St Cross site in Rugby specifically for Endoscopy services.

The new facility in the city centre will be located adjacent to the City of Coventry Health Centre in the Paybody building, which benefits from a clear history and identification as a healthcare campus and its location in the city centre, close to key public transport links and within an area of significant population deprivation makes a strong case for the improvement of accessibility and health outcomes for the local population. The new facility will offer a significant increase in diagnostic capacity for the Coventry population and when completed will welcome around 90,000 patients per annum.  This increase in capacity will aid healthcare services to see and diagnose patients in a timely manner. 

To support this, there is a significant workstream dedicated to patient pathway development, where it is aimed to expedite diagnosis through the development of one stop clinic pathways as well as direct access for primary care clinicians for some diagnostic tests. The programme team will be working with key stakeholders during the development phase to ensure the most efficient pathways and align diagnostic, treatment and community services to best meet the needs of patients locally. Details of key patient pathways were provided in the Briefing Note.

As a further development to the CDC, UHCW NHS Trust has been working with Coventry University (CU) with a view to co-locating teaching and learning facilities at the CDC to support the development of future staff to support diagnostic modalities.  Plans are progressing for CU to occupy part of the first floor of the Paybody building above the CDC.  This will support diagnostic teaching alongside the operational service with an increase in placement opportunities and a potential increase in course intake locally. 

The Trust is also seeking to align continual professional development opportunities for existing staff with the university team to aid in the retention of key staff to the local area.   Working in partnership with the University, the Trust is seeking to coordinate the activities of the Trust and University to develop a shared research portfolio.  Early focus for this research is based around health inequalities across the local population and the alignment of CDC services to CORE20plus5 priorities.  A proposed timeline of the development was provided.

The Board asked questions and made comments on a number of issues including:-

·  How the CDC will be critical to early detection

·  The anticipated benefits of the CDC

·   The importance of recognising and ensuring different pathways to accessing medical care (particularly in light of some difficulties experienced in accessing services via GPs)

·  The importance of providing “wraparound” care for those patients on waiting list and for patients once treatment has ended and how the voluntary sector can assist with this to ensure quality of life.

The Board expressed their support for all of the work being undertaken in this regard.

RESOLVED that the update provided by noted, welcomed and supported and that arrangements for the Board to visit the new Community Diagnostic Centre  be made at an appropriate future date.