Lister hospital and Mount Vernon Cancer Centre get £6.5m funding
NHS patients in Hertfordshire are set to benefit from £6.5m of new equipment, the Department of Health has announced.
The money has been given to the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust as part of a £330m investment programme in England.
Stevenage's Lister hospital will get an extra MRI scanner and an endoscopy decontamination unit.
The Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in Northwood will get a £3.26m replacement radiotherapy machine.
The East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust is currently overseeing a £150m redevelopment programme which will see it become the main emergency and inpatient hospital for east and north Hertfordshire by 2014.
The money will allow some of the elements of this programme to be completed earlier than planned.
Associate Director, Peter Gibson said the new £1.14m modern endoscopy decontamination facility will replace a system which was due to be changed.
The trust has also brought forward its plan to introduce an extra MRI scanner, adding to its two existing MRI units, one at the Lister and one at the QEII hospital in Welwyn Garden City, which currently scan about 16,000 patients each year.
The new £2.1m scanner at the Lister will allow the trust to scan an additional 9,200 patients per year.