PEOPLE needing an evening or weekend appointment with a GP in the Redcar and Cleveland area will be able to take advantage of new scheme.

The STAR – South Tees Access and Response – initiative has been funded by the Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund (PMCF) to improve patient access to their services outside the current opening hours of care.

Led by general practices across the area, it aims to simplify the way the NHS works locally to ensure patients are getting the right care, first time, through a single point of access.

Dr Teik Goh, the scheme’s clinical director and a Guisborough GP, said: “The STAR scheme has been developed - and is led - by GPs across Redcar, East Cleveland and Middlesbrough and aims to provide a better primary care service for patients needing urgent care or advice on evenings and weekends.

“It is an extended GP service in the evenings and weekends so during normal opening times patients should continue to contact their own GP to make an appointment the usual way.”

Through the STAR service, patients wanting to see or speak to a GP urgently between 6.30pm and 9.30pm, Mondays to Fridays, or 8am and 8pm on weekends and bank holidays should ring NHS 111.

A GP or nurse practitioner from the STAR scheme will ring the patient back and carry out an initial assessment over the telephone or offer a face-to-face appointment at a dedicated hub in Redcar Primary Care Hospital or in Middlesbrough, from the end of October.