Making sure that people can access diagnostic services quickly so they can start to receive the most effective treatment as soon as possible is hugely important in determining clinical outcomes and getting people better sooner. We are committed to providing responsive, high quality diagnostic services across South West London. Diagnostic services include scanning services like X-rays, ultrasound, CT and MRI scans, pathology services like blood tests and endoscopy services.
We are committed to making these services as easy as possible for people to access by increasing the number of services we provide and by making more services available outside of hospitals in community diagnostic centres. As well as reducing trips into hospital for many people, these community centres will be able to see patients from across South West London rather than just those who live locally, helping to reduce waiting times and get those people who need further treatment start their treatment sooner.
How we’re making a difference
What are we doing?
In 2022/23 our priorities are:
Increasing diagnostic activity
We want to increase diagnostic activity to a minimum of 120% of pre-pandemic levels. We know that during the pandemic people have had to wait longer for tests and scans they have been referred to. We need to increase the number of diagnostic services available to people in South West London so we can reduce the number of people waiting for diagnosis and start treatment quicker for those people who need it.
Bringing more services into the community
We are developing plans to increase the amount of diagnostic services available in the community. We will do this by increasing capacity at our existing community diagnostic centres and exploring opportunities to develop new community diagnostic centres between 2023 and 2025.
We are also increasing the number of endoscopy rooms across South West London, with the aim of having some of these new endoscopy rooms based in community settings rather than in hospitals.
Diagnostic digital roadmap
This year we will complete the delivery of our diagnostic digital roadmap as part of our digital investment plan. We will then refresh our roadmap to include plans that set out how pathology and imaging networks and community diagnostic centres will support artificial intelligence (AI) research and innovation, and the scalable and sustainable integration of AI-driven diagnostics. We know from early adopters in other ICSs that this will help us improve productivity by about 10% by 2024/25.
Supporting the South West London Pathology Network
We are committed to making sure that the South West London Pathology Network reaches ‘maturing’ status on the national pathology network maturity framework by 2024/25.
Get involved
If you would like to get involved in our work to transform diagnostic services email us at hello@swlondon.nhs.uk
Find out more about how you can get involved in our work on the Get Involved pages.