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28
Jan
Hospital trust plans new community diagnostics centre in Harrogate
Hospital bosses are planning to create a community diagnostics centre in Harrogate to cope with increased demand.
Officials at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust said the proposal would provide easier access to checks and scans, which in turn could speed up treatment times.
The move comes as the trust has struggled to meet diagnostic waiting time targets due to increased demand.
Jonathan Coulter, chief executive of Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, said in a report due before the trust’s board that it was struggling due to an “ongoing mismatch between capacity and demand”.
He said the organisation was in discussions with North Yorkshire’s Integrated Care Board and NHS England over the potential for a Harrogate-based diagnostics centre to help tackle the problem.
Mr Coulter said:
Discussions are ongoing in respect of creating additional permanent capacity through a Harrogate based community diagnostic centre.
The discussions are promising, with capital now earmarked for such a scheme and the revenue required to support such a development being negotiated. I am confident that this will form a positive part of our improvement plan in this area for 2026/27.
According to national standards, NHS bodies are expected to provide patients with a diagnostic test in no more than six weeks. Less than 1% should wait more than that time.
However, in December 2025, the Harrogate trust reported that just 51% of patients were waiting less than six weeks.
A CT scanner.
Mr Coulter said there was a "failure" of Harrogate hospital's internal CT scanner before Christmas, which impacted on the trust's waiting times.
He added that the issue highlighted a need for "greater resilience and capacity" which a community diagnostics centre would help with.
The new permanent facility in Harrogate would provide extra capacity for scans including MRI, CT and ultrasound.
A spokesperson for the trust told the Stray Ferret that it hoped to have a decision on the project “within the next few months”.
They added:
It is important that we do our utmost to ensure that patients are seen as quickly as possible and we are prioritising patients with cancer and acute needs so that they receive timely diagnosis and any appropriate treatment.
The move comes as the trust opened a new community diagnostics centre in Ripon in May 2024.
The £1 million centre, which is based at Ripon Community Hospital, has the capacity to deliver more than 27,000 checks a year.
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