Inside the department store converted into a clinic by cfes in bid to ease pressured NHS waiting lists

A mammogram machine will soon be ready to whirr into action in what was until very recently a department store’s furniture floor.

Where couches and beds once greeted shoppers, a breast screening machine now sits on the top floor of the Beales at the Dolphin Shopping Centre in Poole.

The budding clinic is now one of 40 new diagnostic hubs being built around the country – and the first to be placed inside a shopping centre.

It is being built using kit from the decommissioned NHS Nightingale hospitals introduced during the peak of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown.

The idea is to provide outpatient diagnostic services to ease pressure on local waiting lists, the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust says.Its breast screening unit is just one of the departments being built at the retail attraction on the Dorset coastline.

Once it’s up and running, the hub will initially offer dermatology, orthopaedics and ophthalmology appointments, along with breast and abdominal aortic aneurysm screening, across 16 consulting rooms.