Health Secretary Wes Streeting praised our Urology service as ‘the future of what the NHS should like’ when he visited King George Hospital to open a new one-stop shop at our Elective Surgical Hub.

We’ve transformed a former maternity theatre into two new rooms to complement existing services in our hub – offering ultrasound scans and flexible cystoscopies (a procedure to look inside the bladder) next door to each other.

It will enable patients with suspected bladder cancer to have a scan, cystoscopy and see a consultant to receive their results all on the same day. The new facilities will also help us save £97,000 a year by reducing our reliance on weekend clinics, which cost more to run, and double the number of procedures we’re able to complete daily, from 20 to 40.

Cutting a specially created ribbon on a diagram of a bladder (above), Mr Streeting, also MP for Ilford North, said:

The one-stop shop service here in Urology is what the future of the NHS should look like, you come in, you’ve got a problem, you’re diagnosed very quickly and then sent straight through into people who will help get you sorted out, in some cases on the very same day.

It's really exciting. We are seeing our local trust, BHRUT, actually outperforming others in north east London because of the approach they’re taking, not just to investing in services, but also reforming the way they work. That chimes so strongly what I want, not just as a local MP for our local residents, but as the Health Secretary taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, and we’re definitely seeing some of the best of the NHS here today.

As well as patients with suspected cancer, those with lower urinary tract symptoms will also benefit, as will former cancer patients who are regularly monitored.

Thangadorai Amalesh, our Director of Surgery, Critical Care and Anaesthetics, said:

We have looked at how we can make better use of our facilities, creating up to 40 single-stop appointments a day for patients to have everything they need at the same time, making it a much smoother experience for them.

Usually they would have a scan, go home, come back for a cystoscopy, and then come back again to see a consultant. We have brought all this together in one place, reducing the time they need to take out of their lives and start treatment faster for those who need it.