New diagnostic centre cuts waiting times

A new diagnostics centre in Cornwall is helping to ease pressure on local services and reduce NHS waiting lists, health bosses say.

The Camborne and Redruth Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC), on the hospital site, offers patients a range of services such as X-rays, CT and MRI scans, endoscopy services, and in the future will offer blood tests.

The centre cost about £5 million to build and opened its doors in December 2025, but its official opening event took place on Thursday.

Paul Sewry, from Falmouth, said he only had to wait one day for an MRI scan at the centre.

Sewry, 43, said when people were referred for a diagnostic service, there was a long wait and when there was an available appointment, it was months away.

"It's normally quite a long wait so I was very surprised it was the following day," he said.

He said the centre was only 20 minutes from his home and it was a "really easy" process compared to having to navigate around the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske.

CEO for Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust, Debbie Richards, said the new centre was a "game changer" for people living in the west of the county.

Richards said: "Since it opened just before Christmas, 1200 scans and procedures have happened here.

"It has the capacity to see 70,000 people a year."

In the future, she said working in partnership between the community hospital and the centre, staff will be able to "prevent more people going to Treliske Hospital in due course for emergency care".

Minister of State for the Department of Health and Social Care Karin Smyth, who attended the official opening, said the centre offered patients care "closer to home" and quicker treatment.

Smyth said in Cornwall, the teams had seen "better than average" wait times across the country by about 10%.

"More people here are seen within that six-week crucial period, and we want to see more of that," she said.

"About 80% of people on waiting lists are waiting for diagnostic services... so by having these centres, treating people more quickly and closer to home, you start reducing these lists."

The centre is a partnership between NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board and InHealth, the UK's largest specialist provider of diagnostic solutions. It is the third diagnostic centre to open in Cornwall and is part of a government plan to "speed up testing".

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