RADIOLOGY is back on track at Great Western Hospital following waiting list delays, NHS chiefs said.

In July, more than 1,100 had been left waiting more than six weeks for scans, including MRI tests and ultrasound check-ups. Unhappy NHS bosses held a crisis meeting to discus improvements.

But GWH appears to have turned things around, after recruiting more specialist radiographers and doctors putting in extra shifts.

Paul Vater, chief operating officer at Swindon NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “October has been a good month at the hospital, across all the areas of radiology in particular. There was full compliance with the NHS standards. That improvement has been very evident in October.”

He said slightly fewer patients combined with staff returning from leave could be behind the improvement performance.

“We’re not quite in the throes of winter. Autumn was always thought to be a good time to make progress,” he added.

In September, the Swindon Advertiser spoke to GWH’s top radiologist Dr Andy Beale about the delays in his department.

He said radiologists were seeing ever more demand on the service: “Other specialities like gynaecology or dermatology, their workload has not gone up the same as radiology. If you come to hospital now everybody expects a scan. Everybody expects an X-ray.

“That is the problem now, there’s an expectation that when you come to hospital you are going to have a scan and that will almost certainly involve radiology.”