New scanners at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust accounted for an investment of more than £4.1million over the last financial year.
A second MRI scanner cost £2million and a CT scanner cost £1.1million, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust’s annual general meeting heard last week.
Major investments by the trust also included upgrades to the children’s emergency department at St Mary’s Hospital.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust, which has also just won a CQC rating of ‘good’, more than doubled the amount it spent on capital investment.
In a meeting on Thursday 30th September, board members heard £20.1 million was spent on capital investments, between 1st April 2020 and 31st March 2021.
The trust’s planned capital investment only totalled £5.9million, but it received £1.4 million from the Department of Health and Social Care in donated equipment and secured a further £12.8 million in funding.
Speaking at the AGM, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust’s finance director, Darren Cattell, said almost £4 million was ploughed into the trust’s response to COVID-19.
It was spent on infrastructure, in case there was a surge in demand and extra capacity was required.
Mr Cattell said it also went towards the planning of ‘exciting’ future projects, including the purchasing of properties, one in Newport and one in Sandown, which are destined to become integrated health hubs.
£1.8 million was spent developing the strategic outline case for the Isle of Wight NHS Trust’s ‘investing in our future’ strategy.
This year’s spend was £11.4 million more than in 2019/20, when only £8.7million was spent.
Great stuff! Now all we need is some staff to operate the new kit. Anybody seen any improvement in waiting times for scans?
It’s mostly private patients that get access to MRI anyway, the “normal” working people have to make do with fuzzy x-rays. So all this money is mainly to get more people to go private.