PATIENTS in Bury will soon be able to attend doctors’ appointments at evenings and weekends thanks to £2.7 million investment.

The new pilot scheme also means 30 of the borough’s 33 GP practices can now offer telephone consultations as an alternative to face-to-face appointments.

From January, five surgeries - which have not yet been named - will offer appointments between 8am and 8pm on weekdays and from 8am to 6pm on weekends.

This will be open to all residents across the borough, with patients booking slots through their usual registered GP.

Patients can already take advantage of pre-bookable telephone consultations which sees them called by their GP directly, within their surgery’s opening hours.

Health bosses hope the service will reduce appointment waiting times and prove popular with people wanting to discuss test results or long-term health conditions.

The initiative is being run by Bury GP Federation, which represents 30 practices in the borough, after receiving a £2.7 million Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund grant earlier this year.

Dr Peter Thomas, organisational medical director for Bury GP Federation, said: “This is ultimately about delivering the right care at the right time for all patients in Bury at a place convenient to them.

“Our ambition is to deliver a truly patient-centred service.”

The pilot will also see patients able to book GP appointments and order prescriptions online.

The borough-wide roll out has been a conesqeuence of the Healthier Radcliffe trial proejct, which has seen thousands of patients in Radcliffe benefit from extended GP opening hours since last year.

Dr Thomas, who is a GP at Radcliffe Primary Care Centre, added: “We are already seeing positive results from the Healthier Radcliffe pilot, which shows that patients are valuing longer GP opening hours.

“The GP access pilot is allowing us to build on this so we can improve access to GP services for all patients in Bury.”

The Federation has been working closely with Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to implement the programme.

The CCG’s chairman and clinical lead, Dr Kiran Patel, said the pilot was “good news for patients”.

He added: “By routinely offering telephone consultations, patients can conveniently fit in an appointment without the need to take a trip to the surgery.

“The availability of routine and urgent GP appointments into the evening and during the weekend rolled out across Bury from early 2015 means all patients will be able to fit in an appointment around their existing schedules, without the need to take time off work, or taking their children out of school.”