Disadvantaged areas to receive health cash boost

The government has announced plans to introduce a new £3.8 million scheme to improve health services in areas with the poorest access to primary care services.

Six Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) - two in London and one each in Liverpool, Lancashire, Plymouth and Yorkshire - will participate in a pilot scheme, which will pave the way for a wave of new GP practises and walk-in services to be launched next year.

The six PCTs will open a total of three new walk-in services, two new GP practices, one nurse-led practice, as well as employ additional GPs, nurse practitioners, healthcare assistants.

The scheme also includes plans for new 'breakfast' and 'tea-time' surgeries, which open from as early as 7am and until as late as 10pm; the introduction of a wider range of services at GP practices, such as direct access to medical tests and local care for diabetes, asthma and arthritis; and regular visits from nurses and GPs for nursing and residential home patients.

Commenting on the new scheme, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said: "These new pilots are great news for people living in some of the most deprived and under doctored areas in the country. The programme will tackle inequalities in healthcare by recruiting more GPs and other primary care professionals to provide new services.

"It will give GPs and other providers the freedom to work with the NHS to develop a range of services needed locally, such as diagnostics, as well as to offer better access to a GP."

Ms Hewitt also announced that GPs would have more power to commission services and that all PCTs would have arrangements in place by 2006 to allow GPs to hold a budget for patients' treatment under practice-based commissioning.

Patients in around 15 other areas affected by GP recruitment and retention and availability, as well as rises in population could also see new services open at their local GP practice as part of a second wave of the scheme.

(KMcA/SP)