OUR health services are always under great strain — whether it is hospital wards, A&E departments or the local GP practice.

In recent months, much has been done to improve waiting times at Blackburn’s emergency department and extra GP appointments were made available last winter.

The latest move is for certain surgeries to double the length of their appointments for the over-85s to 20 minutes.

Hopefully, this will have the knock-on effect of improving care and allowing doctors to really get to the heart of their patients’ medical problems.

They will get to know the patients, and their medical history, better and the overall impact could be that more elderly people can live in their own homes for longer, thus reducing the need for extra care and stays in hospital as problems are resolved earlier.

Funding appears to have been secured because this system must not result in more lengthy waits, either for an appointment or in the waiting room, for the rest of the population.

If this model works in Rossendale and with more and more people living longer, it may be possible and prudent to roll it out across East Lancashire to improve the general health of senior citizens.