First patients welcomed at Milford Diagnostic Centre | News

A new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) which will help to speed up diagnosis and treatments has opened its doors to its first patients.

Once fully operational Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust’s new state-of-the-art facility based at Milford Hospital will offer an additional 11,000 MRI and 9,500 CT scans per year.

This will play a vital role in helping to identify illnesses such as cancer and heart disease quicker and ensure patients receive potentially life-saving care sooner. It also provides the added benefit of services closer to home for patients, saving time, money and the environmental impact of travelling further afield to the trust’s big hospital site in Guildford – Royal Surrey County Hospital. 

The new cutting-edge centre is home to two high-tech MRI scanners and the latest CT scanner.

This will complement the services already available at Milford Hospital, which include X-ray, ultrasound, echocardiogram and phlebotomy.

The one-stop-shop community-based service will ease pressure on the trust’s busy diagnostic services at the bigger hospital site in Guildford, which is increasingly in demand for acutely unwell inpatients, the Emergency Department and for complex procedures and biopsies.

Louise Stead, Group Chief Executive for Royal Surrey and Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals, said: “I am delighted that our new Community Diagnostic Centre has started to welcome its first patients, allowing them access to high-tech scans and diagnostic testing closer to home.

“This continued investment in our community hospitals is a key part of our strategy to boost out-of-hospital care and reduce reliance on our main hospital site in Guildford.

“I am hugely proud of everyone who has been involved in this project, which we know will ultimately improve health outcomes for the communities that we serve.”