Jesse Norman MP has congratulated local General Practitioners on winning one of only 20 awards from the new Prime Minister's Challenge Fund.

The award will enable local GPs to offer a seven day a week service from 8 am to 8 pm via three hubs in Hereford, Leominster and Ross-on-Wye, along with 16 more projects specifically designed to improve service to patients, lower waiting times for non-urgent procedures and reduce hospital admissions and re-admissions.

These projects will include technology and video link appointments, and an adolescent outreach programme delivered in colleges providing services not currently supported by school nursing.

Another project will enable social care teams to provide assessment and holistic care planning for vulnerable patients. When the pilot ‘Improving Access, Supporting Primary Care Integration and Whole System Change’ is fully up and running it will provide an additional 90,000 appointments for the county’s 185,000 patients.

Commenting on the award, Jesse said: “This is a great step forward, and a terrific achievement by Dr Nigel Fraser and his team, as well as the CCG, Herefordshire Council and the Wye Valley Trust, among others.

“I was delighted to be able to support the bid from the outset. Herefordshire has the great advantage of combining high quality GPs across the county with integrated IT systems and a high degree of social cohesion. Now with luck we should start to see a lot of innovation across the whole of primary care.”

Further details can be found on http://www.taurushealthcare.co.uk/news/news-article-1.aspx