Our Services

Local Care Direct: Spanning the healthcare sector

We provide a range of services and we are constantly looking for ways to expand and pursue innovative ways of providing care, 24 hours a day.

We currently provide out of hours care for 2.5 million people in West and South Yorkshire. Between the hours of 6:30p.m. and 8a.m. weekdays, throughout weekends and Bank Holidays, patients access us by ringing their normal surgery number. They are then either given the LCD number or transferred to one of our call centres where specially trained staff take their details and pass them on to a clinician for assessment. A doctor or a nurse will either give advice over the phone, arrange for the patient to visit one of our Primary Care Centres or, if required, send a doctor to their home.

We support GP practices during the day, for example covering the practice for a half day to allow training sessions to take place, or short notice cover for sickness or other crises.

We provide a district nurse telephone answering service for all out of hours calls, helping the district nurses to provide an effective service to their patients.

We coordinate on-call pharmacy services to dispense urgent prescriptions.

We provide the out of hours call handling for the drug intervention team across Wakefield. All the staff are fully trained to undertake this work and can give advice over the phone as well as refer on to local services or provide appointments with the drug intervention team for the next working day.

We also provide a dedicated line for all healthcare professionals to access our clinical team for advice.

We are working with commissioners and acute hospitals to provide the best A & E diversion models that achieve the four hour target while improving the experience of patients.

In Halifax and Huddersfield hospitals, our own nurses and emergency care practitioners see all ‘primary care’ patients in A&E. An LCD doctor provides a similar service during the night at Bradford. We also provide A&E streaming in Pontefract and a Walk-in centre in Leeds.

Our dedicated palliative care service enables terminally ill patients or their carers to contact us on a priority out of hours number. Our clinical staff have access to patient notes and are part of the team caring for those patients. In many cases, we can prevent unnecessary admission to hospital.

We also provide unbooked dental access across West Yorkshire. We employ dental nurses and receptionists where appropriate to meet the specific requirements of each area.

We coordinate primary care for disruptive and violent patients. The service ensures such patients can be seen and treated in a secure environment with police or security  support. In addition to this, we provide primary care on a 24 hour basis to local prisons in Doncaster, and out of hours care to prisons in Leeds and Wakefield.