Community Diagnostic Centres: Allergies

(asked on 7th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of community diagnostic hubs offering blood testing to support the diagnosis of allergy.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 10th February 2022

The Elective Recovery Delivery Plan, published 8 February 2022, sets out the ambitions and plans for delivering diagnostic services to support elective recovery. At the Spending Review 2021, £2.3 billion of capital funding for National Health Service diagnostics was announced. This will be used to increase the number of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) to 160 in the next three years.

CDCs offer diagnostic testing such as imaging, pathology, endoscopy and physiological measurements. The types of testing include blood tests and echocardiograms and whilst no specific assessment has been made pertaining to the diagnosis of allergies, these tests will help diagnose a range of non-communicable chronic conditions and may help diagnose severe allergy cases.

There are currently no plans to develop an allergy strategy and no plans to establish allergy specific services in CDCs. Regions and systems will decide on the services each CDC will provide based on population needs. Most allergy testing is done in primary and community care settings, and in specifically in allergy testing clinics.

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