Patients will face reduced emergency care hours in Weymouth

The facility on Melcombe Avenue is one of the first in the country to run an Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), which opens on Sunday (24).

It comes after the community hospital replaced its minor injuries unit with an Urgent Care Centre at the start of 2016.

Health chiefs said the new UTC will continue to provide all of the walk-in care currently available at the hospital’s Urgent Care Centre, with expert clinicians and X-ray facilities on hand to deal with non-life threatening minor ailments and injuries.

Patients will also be able book a UTC appointment via GP practices and the NHS 111 service, meaning they can be seen more quickly.

But the UTC will be open only from 8am to 8pm seven days a week, two hours less than previously.

The Weymouth Community Hospital website states that the opening hours of the current Urgent Care Centre are 8am to 10pm, although a more recent update to the page clarifies that the centre now closes at 9.15pm, with the last patient seen 30 minutes prior to closing time.

A spokesman for provider Dorset HealthCafe University NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that the hours of the centre are being reduced in line with government recommendations.

The team has seen more than 13,000 people so far in 2018, saving patients a trip to the emergency department at Dorset County Hospital.

The spokesman added that the centre’s success since it began in 2016 meant it was ideally placed to become a UTC – the government’s preferred model for the service.

Helen Persey, Dorset HealthCare’s locality manager for Weymouth and Portland, said: “We are delighted that Weymouth has been chosen as one of the first 150 Urgent Treatment Centres in the country. We are already offering most of the services the government expects from a UTC, so this is the logical next step.

“It will continue our work to bring care closer to home and reduce waiting times. Over time, the UTC model will be rolled out across Dorset.”