Bob Moncur formally opened the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening North East Programme Hub at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Friday the 17th March 2017.
Bob is most famous for his role as captain of Newcastle United in the late 60s and he currently holds the record of being the last Newcastle United captain to lift silverware with the club.
He was diagnosed with colon cancer in October 2007 and was successfully treated for the disease at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.
QEF Ltd carried out extensive works within the vacant wards 1 and 2 to create new laboratories in connection with the testing, an expanded post / printing area with automated post machines along with a telephone call centre to answer patient queries.
The unit also contains a research lab and staff facilities. The new unit has been designed by QEF’s in house team, with refurbishment works being managed by QE Facilities LTD, over a period of 26 weeks, with the project costing 870k.
The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening North East Programme Hub is a brand new, state of the art facility at QE Gateshead that will allow the bowel screening team to accommodate the future increase in workload for the Hub in the laboratory, the call centre and the post room. The new laboratory has been designed with a flexible layout to cope with the increasing demands for the current FOB tests - an additional 44 thousand kits were read in 2016 compared to the previous year.
The improved call-centre space is able to deal with an additional thousand calls per week and will also offer a better experience for users with improved response times.
Bob Moncur said:
“It was a privilege to be invited to open this fantastic new centre at the QE. Having suffered from bowel cancer myself I have used this hospital so many times and can testify to the amazing work done by all of the staff.”