North Lincolnshire’s GP Access Hub is set to open in December following last year’s success and will remain there over the winter period to ease pressures and high demand.

Located in Scunthorpe, this service is for patients who require an urgent face-to-face appointment with a GP, but their own practice is unable to see them promptly due to staffing issues.

The Hub will be open Monday to Friday, from 2pm to 8pm, with 42 face-to-face appointments available each day for residents registered with a North Lincolnshire practice.

Patients cannot self-present to the Hub unless referred by their own practice, and details of the location aren’t being confirmed to prevent walk-in patients.

Tarek Mustakim, Operations Manager at Safecare Network, said: “A great way to measure the success of any healthcare provider is the feedback from the patients, and we are proud to be rerunning the service this year following the positive feedback we received last winter from our patients and their relatives.

“The Hub creates a centralised workforce model to provide extra support to the practices that may be struggling with staffing on a particular day. This support is very beneficial to patients as they are grateful to be seen face-to-face on the same day their concern is raised but also for the wider system as it relieves pressure on local acute services such as A&E.

“The service saw over 2,200 patients last year and was well supported and used by all 19 of our practices in North Lincolnshire. We expect it to be the same this year, and our practices will benefit from the additional capacity.”

Patients referred to the service are reminded to wear a face mask due to the high-risk environment for virus transmission.

The service will remain in place until the end of March 2023.