Does the community have capacity for more diagnostics?

As the new year begins, another new plan to save the NHS has been announced. This time, Keir Starmer has promised to ‘drag care out of the hospital and into the community’ as he attempts to fulfil his promise to cut waiting lists.

Under the newly announced plans, community diagnostic centres, which offer tests, scans and x-rays, will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He also promised 17 new and expanded surgical hubs to carry out high-volume procedures such as knee replacements, cataract removal and hernia repairs.

But does the community sector have the capacity to take on yet another initiative to bring down hospital waiting times?

Professor Philip Banfield, chairman of the BMA council, voiced his reservations with the plans, saying: ‘Doctors have been just as frustrated as their patients by the lack of facilities to deliver care and want to bring waiting lists down, but the reality is that without the workforce to meet constantly rising ¬demand, we will not see the progress we all hope for.’