Bury's NHS trust has praised staff following a large fall in the number of Fairfield General Hospital patients waiting for results of MRI or CT scans.

Data from a Freedom of Information request shows 1,542 patients waited more than a month for MRI or CT scans to be reported to doctors between September 2021 and August 2022, but that figure dropped significantly to 63 for the same period in 2023-2024.

Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) said "advanced acceleration technology" as well as the recruitment of radiology staff and collaboration with community diagnostic centres have led to the huge decrease in delays at the Rochdale Old Road hospital.

NCA director of operations of diagnostics and pharmacy, Andrew Stallard, said: “These achievements are a testament to the dedication and hard work of our diagnostic imaging colleagues.

"We have been working hard to improve our turnaround times for diagnostic imaging reports."

Delays in reporting scans previously meant patients had to wait more than 30 days for the results of their diagnosis to be reported to doctors or for cancer to be ruled out, but the process has been speeded up recently.

Mr Stallard said: “The introduction of new technology, such as advanced acceleration technology has played a significant role in increasing our efficiency by reducing examination times and enabling us to fit in more appointments each day.”

Advanced acceleration technology uses techniques that speed up MRI scans, sometimes using artificial intelligence or image compression which speeds up scans while maintaining the image quality.

In August, the Royal Society of Radiographers slammed an NHS report showing nearly 200,000 patients nationally had waited more than a month for scan results in the first three months of this year.

But Mr Stallard is positive about the outlook in the borough.

He added: “Our local community diagnostic centre scanners have also been instrumental in reducing backlog and increasing overall capacity.

“Additionally, through successful recruitment within our radiology team we have further improved our reporting turnaround times."