Patients in Oakham requiring urgent treatment outside of GP opening hours are benefiting from changes to evening and weekend care services that came into effect at the start of this month.

The East Leicestershire and Rutland CCG has decided that Oakham's Rutland Memorial Hospital will be open on weekdays from 6.30pm to 9pm and weekends and bank holidays from 9am to 7pm for patients using the 911 service, GP referrals or requiring walk-in urgent treatment.

Urgent care services, which offer appointments with a GP or Nurse, can be accessed by patients if they need medical attention for conditions which are not life-threatening.

Tim Sacks, Chief Operating Officer, at ELR Clinical Commissioning Group said: "Local people have told us that having services close to home is important to them.

"They've also told us that services need to be simpler so its clearer where they need to go when they have an urgent care need.

"We've listened and are changing the opening hours of some of our urgent care centres so that they are open when local GP practices close, making it simpler for people to know which service to go to when.

"We believe the changes will help to improve access to urgent care services for all of our patients but should also ease the pressure on our accident and emergency departments."

The new services across East Leicestershire and Rutland will be provided by DHU Health Care and the East Leicestershire and Rutland GP Federation following a procurement process.

The Managing Director of DHU Urgent Care Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, Simon Harris said: "We are proud to be the delivery partners to operate and manage the out of hours services across East Leicestershire and Rutland.

"We're looking forward to offering patients the benefits of our experience running urgent care services which are joined up with NHS111 to give people access to a range of out of hours care that meets their needs."

ELR CCG is formed of GPs from 31 practices in the south and east of Leicestershire and Rutland serving around 327,000 patients.

It is led by a Governing Body comprising elected GP members, a secondary care clinician and lead nurse, independent lay members, representatives of Healthwatch and senior managers.

It is supported by a team of staff overseeing the daily business of the CCG.