PATIENTS in north Essex are set for more joined up community care thanks to a new alliance between hospitals, GPs, businesses and charities. The North East Essex Integrated Community Services (NICS) will be responsible for providing services, such as community nursing, stroke rehabilitation and community beds, in Colchester and Tendring from July. The service is made up from the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, GP Primary Choice, Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust and Virgin, which provides children’s services. A new partnership has been awarded the £440million ten-year contract to run the new joined-up community healthcare service by the NHS North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
ELDERLY residents in north Essex are being urged to be patient after bombarding surgeries with calls for the Covid-19 vaccine. It comes as GP practices across Colchester and Tendring have been inundated with calls from patients eager for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group has so far given out all the 2,000 doses it had, mostly to vulnerable and high-risk patients in their 80s. They were vaccinated over the past two weeks at temporary clinics set up at the St Helena Hospice’s Tendring Centre in Clacton and Colchester Primary Care Centre. It is understood that across north east Essex and south Suffolk that there are 20 primary care sites and 16 temporary mass vaccination sites being geared up to deliver the vaccine from as early as January 11.
WALTON’S Columbine Centre is set to be used as a mass vaccination centre, it has been revealed. Frinton and Walton Town Council said the NHS has confirmed it will be hiring the centre, in Princes Esplanade, as part of the roll out of the biggest vaccination programme in its history. It is understood the NHS will take on the site to administer the PfizerBioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the New Year. Clerk Jerry Wedge said: “Following a number of site visits during the last few weeks, the NHS have confirmed they want to make use of part of the Columbine Centre as a mass vaccination centre.