£10m ‘life-saving’ facility opens at South Tyneside District Hospital - saving patients 90-minute round trip

The £10m Integrated Diagnostic Centre (IDC) has opened at South Tyneside District Hospital and is now welcoming its first patients.

The IDC has been created by a partnership between South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and Alliance Medical Limited, a long-term partner of the Trust which has provided scanning services for many years.

It is hoped that the new centre will help tackle existing waiting lists, with space set aside within the unit to increase its capacity due to the expected demand for diagnostics to rise in the coming years.

The IDC currently has two CT and two MRI scanners, which will be joined by a PET-CT scanner later this year.

The centre’s first patient was 73-year-old John Goss, from Washington, who has been undergoing investigations for crackling sounds in his chest.

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He said: “I’d never been to the hospital in South Shields before, but found it easily and when I got to the front desk, they said ‘You’re our first ever patient’ and I thought what’s happening here!

“It was wonderful, it’s a lovely open building, spotlessly clean and I was very well looked after by the team.”

Among the first visitors to the IDC was Susan Smith, who lives in Bowburn, but returned to her hometown for her check following the diagnosis of kidney stones last autumn.

The 66-year-old retired civial servant commented: “My experience was very good, it’s a lovely, airy unit.

“Going through the scanner, it was interesting hearing it whizz around but it was very quick and the team were very good.

The centre was built by Sunderland firm, Brims, on land which was once home to a former derelict nurses’ home, opposite the hospital’s Ingham Wing.

The opening of the IDC means patients no longer need to travel to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough or Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital for their checks.