NHS England Chair visits Cheshire and Merseyside

The Chair of NHS England visited Liverpool to find out how investment in community care is having a positive impact across Cheshire and Merseyside.

Richard Meddings visited both the Living Well outreach service and Paddington Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) to discover the role they are playing in transforming access to care and patient outcomes.

Paddington CDC, operated by The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, has delivered more than 36,000 additional diagnostic tests since it opened in 2023 and will have the capacity to deliver c60,000 tests next year - meaning thousands more people will be supported to start their treatment sooner.

During the visit to Paddington CDC, Mr Meddings also heard about the success of Cheshire and Merseyside’s wider network of CDCs, which have so far helped to deliver 785,000 additional diagnostic tests across the sub-region. Improvements in diagnostics and cancer care have recently seen Cheshire and Merseyside outperform the national average for cancer survival for the very first time.

The Living Well service, operated by Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust operates on a fully drop-in basis and brings routine immunisations, health checks and mental wellbeing support into to the heart of communities across Cheshire and Merseyside. Since launching in 2022, the service has run more than 1,800 focused clinics, helping an estimated 30,000 people.

Visiting the outreach bus outside the Chung Wah Supermarket in central Liverpool, Mr Meddings also met a number of Chinese Community Champions – who help to promote the service in the local community.

Earlier in the day, Mr Meddings attended round-table discussions with NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Board, touching on topics including digital transformation in primary care, which is improving the operational efficiency of practices whilst also improving proactive management of patients with long term conditions.

Raj Jain, Chair of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, said: “It was a privilege to welcome the NHS England Chair to Cheshire and Merseyside and to showcase a number of our success stories. Both the Living Well service and Paddington Community Diagnostic Centre are excellent examples of how our work as a system is helping to transform care and access to care for the 2.7 million residents we serve.”

Joan Spencer, incoming Chief Executive of The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, said: “This was a fantastic opportunity to showcase the incredible work that is being done to make diagnostic testing more efficient and accessible for our patients. We are incredibly proud of Paddington CDC's efforts in delivering high-quality testing for suspected cancers and a variety of other conditions. The centre has truly become a cornerstone in supporting the Mutual Aid programme across Cheshire and Merseyside and, in the past year alone, has successfully conducted more than 1,500 tests on behalf of partner Trusts.”

Tim Welch, Chief Executive of Cheshire and Wirral Partnership, said: “We were delighted to welcome the NHS England Chair to one of our Living Well Service clinics in Chinatown in Liverpool. It was especially wonderful to see the phenomenal connection the service has with the local community – both residents and local charities – with a great turnout to the clinic. Since launching in 2022, the Living Well Service has continued to grow, engaging with to hard-to-reach communities, ensuring that healthcare is available to all people across our region.”