The temporary NHS Nightingale hospital based at Harrogate’s Convention Centre is now offering CT scans for patients 7 days a week.
The hospital opened in April, but was not needed to care for patients with COVID-19, is now forming part of the recovery phase in the region.
It will now provide a combination of diagnostic scans and surveillance scans to monitor patients with a prior diagnosis of a medical condition.
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust will be the first trusts to use the facility, providing outpatient appointments for patients with radiology referrals.
The temporary hospital will use the Silverlink patient administration system, and for documentation, Civica.
Steve Russell, Chief Executive of NHS Nightingale Hospital Yorkshire and the Humber and Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, said “A number of NHS services have been significantly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as hospitals have had to prioritise the care of patients with the virus.”
“The measures taken to introduce social distancing and manage hospital demand have meant that we’ve not yet needed to use the NHS Nightingale Hospital for its original intended purpose. We’ve therefore taken the decision to utilise the equipment and begin offering CT scans at the facility so that we can get patients seen quickly.”
Every patient who attends the facility will be screened before their appointment to check that they don’t have the symptoms of Covid-19 and appointments will only be offered to those who are neither isolating, nor shielding.
