MORE cancer patients have been kept waiting for potentially life-saving tests because of a broken scanner and construction work at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

Work began in December to replace two old magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners but during the construction, one of the scanners had to be turned off to allow the new machine to be installed.

It meant the Trust failed to hit its target of providing all cancer patients with key diagnostic tests within six weeks. But the hospital’s problems were compounded when its computerised tomography (CT) scanner broke last month, resulting in it breaching its target of testing 90% of patients within 62 days - instead hitting 81.3%.

Planned care director Professor Peter Malone insisted that a high number of patients who had delayed their appointments until after the Christmas period had added to the waiting times.

Speaking at a board of directors meeting on Monday [31] he said: “Patients are not obliged to tell us why they don’t come.

“The 62-day wait is simply because of the unavailability of the CT scanner.”

The hospital brought in a second mobile CT scanner and out-sourced patients to its Bracknell clinic, and urgent care director Dr Sue Edees said all the scanners are expected to be back up and running later this month.

She added: “It is not entirely due to the scanners being down that we are in this position. We have a very heavy referral rate.”

But Professor Malone admitted the impact to waiting times caused by installing the new scanners could have been predicted. He said: “It wasn’t foreseen. In hindsight it was foreseeable, but it slipped under the radar.”

Dr Edees added: “It wasn’t flagged up in the original building work. The contractors were not clear of that impact on the Trust.”