Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs)

Programme lead

Dr Liz Bishop

Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for the Cheshire and Merseyside Diagnostics Programme

Chief Executive of The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS FT

Community Diagnostic Centres are digitally connected, multi-diagnostic facilities. In Cheshire and Merseyside, we currently have 10 CDCs open across our health and care system. Since our first CDC was established, our CDCs have delivered over 400,000 new diagnostic tests, and currently provide around 7,000 tests a week, with services accessible for up to 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week.

Map of CDCs

St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Clatterbridge in Wirral were early adopter sites for CDCs followed by Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Ellesmere Port and Victoria Infirmary in Northwich. Clatterbridge CDC recently welcomed its 25,000th patient in the summer of 2023. They have been be joined by two new centres at Halton General Hospital, Runcorn Shopping Centre, Paddington CDC in Liverpool City Centre and East Cheshire CDC at Congleton War Memorial each of which officially opened in 2023.  

CDCs are not a walk-in centre, but provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ coordinated approach for planned diagnostics. People can access our CDC services through new or existing pathways and the majority of referrals come from GP direct access, surveillance and screening programmes or from outpatients.

Services

Tests delivered in CDCs include:

Imaging

Plain X-ray, ultrasound, CT and MRI

Physiological measurements

Echocardiography, ECG and rhythm monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, spirometry, FeNO, lung function tests, simple field tests, sleep studies, oximetry, blood gas analysis

Pathology

Phlebotomy, point of care testing (POCT), D-Dimer testing

Endoscopy

Gastroscopy, colonoscopy, flexi-sigmoidoscopy (endoscopy services only provided in larger CDCs)