00The story
Why the clinic exists: the three months that mattered.
Helen Marchetti ran an NHS skin cancer clinic for seventeen years and kept meeting the same patient: someone who had noticed a mole change in March, seen a GP in April, been photographed in May and reached her in June. Most of them were fine. Some of them were not, and for those the three months mattered. Oakwood opened in 2016 with one promise, that a changed mole would be under a consultant's dermatoscope within three working days and the same day if it was bleeding, and two same-day slots held back every weekday to keep it.
Tom Okafor built the minor operations room in 2018 so that removals did not mean a second wait somewhere else. James Whitlock brought the phototherapy cabinet and the patch test series in 2019. Priya Nair the acne programme, Aisha Rahman the children's room, Claire Dunphy the photo triage line in 2022, which now handles more first contacts than the phone. Marek runs the cabinet from a quarter past seven.
The building has a mapping booth, a minor operations room, a phototherapy room, six consulting rooms, a children's room and a garden room where PDT patients wait for their cream to work. It is white and moss green because Helen wanted a clinic that looked clean without looking frightening.
We count everything. The numbers are on their own page.
The numbers, on their own page →
The three-day promise
If we cannot offer a mole check within three working days of your call or photo, the check is free. Same-day slots for bleeding, crusting or a mole changing within weeks are held every weekday and released at 08:00 to whoever rings.
