JUST what the doctor ordered - a custom-built health centre to treat patients when surgeries are closed.

The £400,000 centre on the former site of Layton Clinic, due to open by the end of the year, will provide an ultra-modern service for 125 Blackpool GPs and their 250,000 patients at nights, weekends and on public holidays.

The two-storey building on St Walburga's Road will have fully-equipped consulting rooms, a comfortable waiting room and a high-tech computerised communications room to take patient calls.

In addition, trained telephone operators, with doctors and nurses on hand, will be able to give emergency phone advice and three cars with radio phones will be based at the centre for doctors to make home visits.

Fylde Coast Medical Services, a GP co-operative set up in 1994 to provide out-of-hours care, came up with the plan when it outgrew its leased offices in Devonshire Road Hospital.

It approached Fylde Community Health Trust to rebuild the old clinic which had reached the end of its useful life.

The health trust will retain about a third of the building to reinstate a number of its daytime clinics.

Dr John Poyner, chair of Fylde Coast Medical Services, said: "We have always had a warm working relationship with the Community Trust and together will provide an out-of-hours centre second to none, of which the local people of Blackpool, Wyre and the Fylde can be justifiably proud."

Community Trust chief executive Philip Scully commented: "I believe this partnership will be of enormous benefit to the community, providing the opportunity to develop dynamic new primary care facilities, which mean local people have access to the best possible round-the-clock health service."

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