Kings Heath Community Diagnostic Centre building has arrived

New CDC at Kings Heath in July

Last weekend, the residents of Kings Heath in Northampton, watched as the new local NHS Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) building arrived.

Early on Saturday morning, around 200 onlookers watched as a huge 42.5 metre crane rolled in to action delivering the new unit. By the end of the day, the building that will soon become the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) scanning unit as part of the Community Diagnostic Centre was in place. You can watch a video of the delivery below on on YouTube.

The CDC is adjacent to the Kings Heath General Practice in Northampton and will allow patients in Northampton to avoid visits to the hospital as they will be able to receive the tests that they need in a more convenient location instead.

Polly Grimmett, Director of Strategy for University Hospitals of Northamptonshire says “Our ambition is to reduce waiting times by increasing capacity for diagnostic tests across the county. As well as being more convenient for patients at a location away from the hospital, increased access to diagnostic testing will help with earlier diagnosis of conditions such as cancer and heart disease, and help patients access the life-saving treatments they need quickly.”

The radiology team from Northampton General have already been running a clinical diagnostic service out of Kings Heath Medical Centre since Autumn 2023, however the new building will bring further MRI and CT equipment to the community for NHS patients. Because of the CDC at Kings Heath, an additional 26,442 diagnostic tests per year are predicted to be available to NHS patients in Northampton.

There are currently two new sites planned in Northamptonshire; one at Kings Heath and one at Willowbrook in Corby, both will include MRI and CT scanners meaning patients will have more localised access to scans.

The building delivered in modular units supplied by Medula, have been built offsite and were craned into place one at a time. The logistics leading to this day involved multiple teams from University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (Northampton and Kettering General Hospitals), Alliance Medical, Medula, building contractors, traffic management and local police to get the building into place with minimal disruption to the local area.

Site manager for Medula, Simon Jones said “There was a lot of interest from local residents and a crowd onlookers came to watch as the units were craned in. The response was really positive. We welcome questions from the neighbours here. There were a few things that could have stalled the progress on the day, but thanks to the careful planning it all came together and with very fluent execution of the plan”

The groundworks for the CDC at Corby are underway with the delivery of the modular units expected at the end of August.