Wood Green diagnostic centre brings more scans to the mall

Since late November 2024, the Wood Green NHS Community Diagnostic Centre inside The Mall has been running new MRI and CT suites on a lower ground floor, extending an offer that began in August 2022 with blood tests, x-rays, ultrasound and eye clinics so that Haringey residents can complete more of their diagnostic pathway on the high street rather than at a main hospital site.

The centre, run by Whittington Health NHS Trust, recorded around 55,000 local people tested between its first opening in August 2022 and the launch of the expanded unit, reflecting steady day-to-day use of its phlebotomy, imaging and ophthalmology rooms by patients referred from GP practices and hospital teams across north central London.

From November 2024, North Central London Cancer Alliance has also added Wood Green as a third location for the NHS Targeted Lung Health Check programme, alongside University College Hospital and Finchley Memorial Hospital, giving eligible 55 to 74-year-olds who smoke or used to smoke the option to complete a structured telephone lung assessment and, where needed, a low-dose CT scan in the shopping centre rather than travelling across the city.

Across the capital, NHS England London reports that twelve community diagnostic centres have now opened, delivering nearly two million tests over four years, while national guidance on the Community Diagnostic Centre programme notes that 165 sites were operational across England as of August 2024 and have together provided more than nine million tests, checks and scans, with centres expected to offer services for at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week to bring diagnostics closer to home.

A separate planning report for three new community diagnostic centres in north west London estimated that 2.04 million residents, or 85 per cent of the area’s 2.4 million population, would live within a 45-minute drive of one of those sites and that 594,362 people, or 25 per cent of residents, could reach a centre within 45 minutes by public transport, illustrating how locating units at accessible hubs is being used to shorten journeys and reach communities with higher levels of ill health.

By combining multiple tests under one roof, situating scanners and blood rooms alongside everyday shops and bus routes, and being used for targeted programmes such as lung health checks, the Wood Green centre is presented by local planners as a practical example of the wider community diagnostics approach that aims to reduce inequalities in who receives timely tests while easing the need for repeated trips to large acute hospitals.

24 November 2025 13:39 By London Health News Desk