The latest published statistics show that in November 2022 the number of people receiving diagnostic tests in the North West continued to go up.  There were 294,000 tests carried out during the month, which is an increase of 12% compared to the number carried out at the start of last year (January 2022).  It is also encouraging that the number of people who are waiting for more than six weeks for their diagnostic appointment was down by 7% over the same period and the total number of people waiting for a diagnostic test had started to come down, with a fall of 3%.

The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on the North West and the NHS in the region has now been under significant pressure for a long time. This is due to a combination of high levels of Covid-19 circulating in our communities over the past three years, high levels of bed occupancy, the impact on hospital admission, staff absences due to COVID-19, and continuing high demand for services as people who have held off accessing the NHS with their health concerns during the pandemic start to come forward.

Local teams have made significant progress on diagnostics recovery and transformation over the last year.  To further boost this, a national Focus on Diagnostics Month is planned for March, which aims to support:

• A consistent reduction in 6 week wait backlogs
• A review of opportunities to optimise histopathology services by the end of March
• A reduction in DNA levels to 3% or below where this level is already being achieved

Local teams are planning to focus on a number of areas including:

• Cheshire and Merseyside: a further focus on 78+ week waiters and clearing the backlog, including MRI, echo and endoscopy appointments; roll-out of a single cardiology digital PACS across all Trusts

• Lancashire and south Cumbria: an ‘echo-thon’ for Lancashire Teaching Hospital patients; increase levels of activity at the Fatima CDC; mutual aid from East Lancashire Hospital to Lancashire Teaching Hospital to reduce backlog; replacement of equipment used in urodynamics service at Lancashire Teaching Hospital to improve productivity increasing number of patients per session; increase nurse training numbers at East Lancashire Hospital

• Greater Manchester: Bolton Hospital plan to focus on endo, audiology, paediatric echo, non-obstetric ultrasound (NOUS), MRI, CT and histopathology; Manchester will focus on CT, NOUS, echo, histopathology; hospitals that are part of Northern Care Alliance will focus on echo

Further details about the national plans for Focus on Diagnostics Month will be posted here Focus on Diagnostics Month – National Diagnostics Transformation Programme – FutureNHS Collaboration Platform, including dates for webinars, toolkits and case-studies.  Systems have been asked to submit their plans to support the month, by the middle of February.