A ceremony on April 25th marked a key milestone at a new diagnostics centre in Thurrock, Essex, with Jen Craft MP and James McMurdock MP laying the final bricks in the project’s construction.
Thurrock Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC), which is due to open in the summer, will provide a wide range of essential diagnostic services to the local community. This will speed up access to vital healthcare capabilities while reducing waiting times and leading to faster diagnosis for patients.
The new state-of-the-art centre is currently being built by Morgan Sindall Construction’s Essex business and will be run by Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust in collaboration with key healthcare providers across the integrated care board / region.
The construction activity has included the refurbishment of a 1,100 m2 building into new consulting rooms and staff support spaces. An existing single-storey building has also been demolished and replaced with a new infill building to house X-ray rooms, CT, and MRI scanners.
When complete, the CDC will offer CT, MRI, and ultrasound scans, echocardiography, blood tests, X-rays, and lung checks. An extra 75,000 appointments will be offered at the centre each year, with patients able to schedule checks seven days per week.
The brick laying ceremony was attended by local elected representatives, stakeholders and representatives from Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust as well as Morgan Sindall’s project team.
This included Health and Wellbeing Board Chair Cllr Mark Hooper, Mayor of Thurrock Cllr Kairen Raper, Morgan Sindall Construction’s Essex Area Director Ryan Liversage, and Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust’s Acting Divisional Director James Currell.
The CDCs are part of a national programme funded by the Government to increase diagnostic capacity, providing one-stop shops for checks, tests and scans in the heart of local communities. They form part of the wider estates and infrastructure plans within NHS Mid and South Essex, bringing care into communities and out of acute hospitals.
Thurrock’s centre will be the first of four in mid and south Essex, with CDCs set to open in Southend, Braintree and Pitsea.
