Out-of-hours doctors’ appointments in Herefordshire are set to move away from the Station Medical Centre in the city from this autumn.

Taurus Healthcare, a not-for-profit company providing the service in the county, wants to move the service from the station building, where it currently rents space, to the Nelson Building in the city’s Whitecross Road.

It says there are “compelling reasons operationally and economically” to relocate the service.

RELATED NEWS:

The new building, formerly home to local government services firm Hoople, offers car parking to the rear while being walkable from the city centre, Taurus said.

To be shared with Wye Valley Trust’s community health team, it will host clinics for health checks, vaccinations and social prescribing as well as GP consultations.

A new patient entrance to the building from the car park is proposed.

What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

Home visits and other health services currently run from the Station Medical Centre by Hereford Medical Group remain unaffected, with the so-called enhanced access service providing routine evening and weekend appointments to patients still being accessed from this building.

Local monitoring group Healthwatch Herefordshire, which has been seeking the public’s views on the planned move, found it did not prompt strong opposition, though with transport emerging as the main concern.

“Many of the issues people raised about the alternative location are also issues with the current site – around public transport which isn’t available at night anyway,” its chief officer Christine Price said.

OTHER NEWS:

Healthwatch is recommending that the city's Zipper free electric bus service stop for passengers close to Nelson House at weekends.

A meeting of Herefordshire Council’s health, care and wellbeing scrutiny committee will decide next Tuesday (May 28) whether to back the proposed change and to include any recommendations.

The GP out-of-hours service is for urgent appointments and is only available via referral from a call to NHS 111. Notes from such visits are shared with patients’ own GPs.