Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) increase scanner availability for dementia diagnosis, (b) reduce diagnosis times and (c) improve patient outcomes.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to transforming diagnostic services and will support the National Health Service to increase diagnostic capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new capacity, including magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.
Our Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, builds on the investments already made with an ambitious vision for the future of diagnostic testing. This will include more straight-to-test pathways, increasing and expanding community diagnostic centres (CDCs), and better use of technology. With 170 CDCs due to be up and running by the end of March 2025, CDCs can take on more of the growing diagnostic demand within elective care. We will also deliver additional CDC capacity in 2025/26 by expanding a number of existing CDCs and building up to five new ones.
Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Gates Ventures, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the National Institute for Health and Care Research is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the NHS to support the diagnosis of dementia.
The Dementia Care Pathway: Full Implementation Guidance, commissioned by NHS England, outlines the dementia care pathway and associated benchmarks to support improvements in the delivery and quality of care and support, for people living with dementia and their families and carers. The guide showcases good-practice examples of services that have successfully reduced their waiting times. Further information is available at the following link: