Building work is underway on a new £15 million endoscopy unit at the Cumberland Infirmary which will help to reduce waiting lists and improve timely diagnosis for cancer.
Clinical leaders and construction partners gathered on Wednesday morning to celebrate the start of the work which is anticipated to be finished by March 2025.
The unit will enable patients to be seen more locally in Carlisle instead of Newcastle as well as provide better access to endoscopy services.
Excavation of the original site is now complete and retaining wall structure are beginning to go up.
Daya Karat, consultant surgeon at North Cumbria Integrated Care, said: "This new build will obviously have tremendous benefits for our communities, our population here in Cumbria, as well as all of our staff working in our trust.
"Clearly the reason for expansion is to increase our capacity and this will allow us to provide a much more timely service for our patients.
"It will allow us to achieve faster diagnoses, particularly cancer diagnoses, and equally important we think we've modelled this correctly that in the future as endoscopy demand increases year on year, we will have the capacity to meet that demand going forward into the next decade or possibly longer."
READ MORE: Patients spending more than five hours in Cumberland Infirmary A&E
The current endoscopy unit in the hospital was built 25 years ago and two of the three rooms currently do not meet national accreditation standards.
There will be five clinical rooms as well as an outpatient area in the new unit which will enable staff to see people faster - 99 per cent of patients will receive their diagnostic procedure within six weeks of referral.
It will also greatly improve the training facilities for staff.
Dr Adrian Clements, executive medical director, added: "This facility will really allow us to deliver high quality, safe and timely care to our population.
"I think the new opportunities in the new unit to train future clinicians is really exciting.
"It builds on our partnership with the Pears Cumbria School of Medicine that will be opening in September 2025.
"The ability to train the future workforce and attract that future workforce to Cumbria is critical for us to deliver high quality care."
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel