The new facility on the site of Weston General Hospital combines the expertise of hospital Emergency Department doctors and nurses with some GPs who specialise in urgent care.
Patients who come through the doors will be directed to the most appropriate professional to deal with their injury or illness – and they can expect to be re-directed elsewhere if that is not specifically an Urgent Care specialist.
Fifty thousand patients used the Emergency Department of Weston General Hospital last year – and the figure is rising by up to ten per cent a year.
The new way of working in the Urgent Care Centre has been developed by the hospital and GPs together to try to make sure this demand is handled most appropriately in future – and not necessarily on-the-spot.
Weston Area Health Trust Chief Executive Lorene Read said: “We are very proud to be on the verge of opening our new Urgent Care Centre, which has been completed on time and on budget.
“It is a state-of-the-art facility offering patients far greater privacy and dignity than our previous, more cramped Emergency Department could do.
“We have worked hard with our GP colleagues to ensure that when it opens it will offer a new way of delivering urgent care to the local population. It has been built with public money for the public good and the public need now to help us make it work as well as it possibly can.
“In the past, some patients have chosen to come to the Hospital’s Emergency Department instead of going to their own GP or Dentist, and now we will be doing more to help them access the right care at the right time in the right place.
“If they need urgent care in a hospital setting, then they will certainly get it here, but if they could be better served by their own GP or dentist, then they will be re-directed to them, and helped to access them, if necessary.”
Dr Kevin Haggerty, GP Commissioning lead for Urgent Care in North Somerset, said: “Demand at the hospital has risen over the last few years, we can not afford to let it continue to rise, so please help us by making best use of all your NHS services.
“We are saying to patients today: “Your experience here will be different.” You will be directed to the most appropriate professional to deliver your care – and in some cases, that will be your own GP or Dentist, or a Pharmacist.
“The Urgent Care Service will complement your GP’s service. It is NOT an alternative to your GP or to accessing normal primary care services, and in some cases you will be advised you could be treated more appropriately elsewhere.”
For further information, please contact Caroline Welch on 01934 64709