Private deal for £2m scanner

By Sophie Blakemore, Birmingham Post
A private company is providing a Birmingham hospital with a £2 million high-tech cancer scanner after the Department of Health refused to meet the cost. But the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston, where the Positron Emission Tomography machine will be housed, still cannot pay for its patients to use it.


The scanner, believed to be the only permanent one of its type outside London for treating NHS patients, could save hundreds of lives. It is intended for use by patients from across the Midlands and the North. The equipment - an advanced type of PET with combined CT scanner - will be based in a purpose-built bunker at the QE. It is expected to be on site and in use by December next year.

The total investment will be about £3.5 million. The equipment and running costs are being met by Alliance Medical, one of two main imaging services providers to the NHS, which is hoping to recoup its outlay from hospitals and trusts sending their patients to it, as well as private clients.

Each scan will cost an estimated £700-£800 and the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust - which runs the QE and Selly Oak hospitals - has yet to persuade its local primary care trusts and the DoH to provide the money for them. Chris Boivin, a consultant clinical scientist at the QE, who has campaigned for the machine, said Britain lagged behind Europe and the USA on recognising the long term cost-effectiveness and benefits of PET-CT scanners.

"The Government has said it will not provide funding for PET scanners on the NHS for at least two years," he said. We had to look elsewhere for the benefit of our patients who are not getting the best cancer management available to them without PET. It was a case of biting the bitter apple but in the long term it will help to save the lives of patients previously thought inoperable and prevent unnecessary surgery on those who cannot be cured. The PCT currently have no money to fund it. It has got to be discussed sensibly. In the bigger picture, it will be saving lots of very expensive and unnecessary surgery and if we can make money out of that, it can be put back into PET scanners as a potential cost saving."

He added: "Alliance Medical are gambling PET will take off in the next few years and they will get their investment back as the NHS sends patients to them for scanning, with hospitals paying on a per patient basis. The good thing about this deal for us is that the company is taking the risk."

The move comes after leading radiologist Dr Peter Guest made an appeal in The Birmingham Post earlier this month for the Government to permanently base one of the PETs in the city. Dr Guest is consultant radiolo-gist at the QE Hospital and clinical director for radiology at the private Priory Hospital, also in Edgbaston, where a mobile PET scanner is used on a fortnightly basis.

"It is very important to have a fixed site to provide a service to people outside London making treatment easier for them," he said.

"The PET scanner is also vital to the management of cancer within the West Midlands and now it has been approved, it will raise the profile of Birmingham as a leader in the field. But most important is that it will make a difference to patients and the care and treatment they receive."

The PET-CT scanner can identify cancers at an earlier stage, enabling faster access to treatment and potentially greater chances of survival.

It can also help prevent unnecessary expensive surgery in patients who have secondary cancers with no chance of cure, saving the NHS valuable money. Unlike standard techniques such as X-rays and MRI scans, which show body structures like bones and tissue, a PET scanner can highlight chemical and physiological changes in body function.

It is particularly sensitive to small cancers, such as lung cancer and lymphoma, not easily seen on conventional imaging. PET scanning can help establish the spread of tumours and assess the effects of cancer treatments.