Investing in facilities
9.1 The decades of underfunding of the NHS have taken their toll on cancer equipment and facilities.
Staff have to struggle with ageing, unreliable equipment; patients have to wait for diagnosis and treatment because of inadequate provision of essential equipment and facilities.
9.2 Cancer facilities are unevenly distributed across the country. And the further away a patient lives from a radiotherapy centre, or the lower the number of linear accelerators in the area, the less chance the patient has of being referred for treatment. The Survey of Radiotherapy Provision, commissioned by the Department of Health and published in June 2000 highlighted the inequalities across the country in access to radiotherapy. The same is true of equipment for diagnosis of cancer.
9.3 Addressing regional imbalances requires planning and cannot be achieved overnight. It takes some 18 months from the time of ordering an additional linear accelerator until it is able to start treating patients. New concrete bunkers are needed to house the equipment. Once installed in the bunker, up to six months of checks and calibrations are needed to ensure the machine will function safely.
9.4 Putting right these decades of under-investment will take time. There are limits to the number of new machines and new buildings that can be manufactured and installed each year. We have already made a start.
New Opportunities Fund
£93 million from the National Lottery New Opportunities Fund is being used to buy:
- 226 mammography machines
- 46 ultrasound units and
- 60 trailers for the Breast Screening Programme
- 33 MRI scanners to support the accurate diagnosis and staging of cancer patients
- 56 linear accelerators.
This means that all linear accelerators over 11 years old in 1999 are being replaced and an additional 14 new machines are being purchased to start to tackle inequalities in access to radiotherapy.
9.5 On top of the equipment being funded through the New Opportunities Fund (see above), as a result of the NHS Plan, over the next three years there will be a further 50 new MRI scanners, 200 new CT scanners and 45 linear accelerators. This will mean that the NHS meets the Royal College of Radiologists' current recommendation of 4 linear accelerators per million population. Funding has been made available for modern treatment planning computers and simulation equipment so that the full benefits of all the linear accelerators purchased can be realised. A further £15 million is being invested to support modernisation of 23 pathology services.
