Professor Mike Holmes, who coordinates Askham Bar Community Care Centre, says in his latest column for The Press that a new clinic will open there later this month for heart patients waiting to be seen by specialists.

"We’ve recently been given the go ahead to develop a new Community Care Centre at Acomb Garth, which is fantastic news for the people of York!

Last December, working with partners across the city, we applied to City of York Council to change the use of the Acomb Garth site from a secure residential institution to a primary care medical centre.

Planning permission was granted towards the end of April and we’re aiming to open the site later this summer as a hub from which we can provide more integrated, closer-to-home, community care services for local people.

As a not-for-profit organisation, it’s very important to us that we reinvest into the communities that we serve.

We’re keen to develop new and innovative services that will really benefit local people and this great new facility will make an excellent base for us.

With this in mind, I also wanted to tell you about another exciting development - we’re now helping to support people in York who have long-term heart issues, as they await further treatment.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many patients with long-term heart issues are currently waiting longer to be seen by a specialist team.

We’re proud to be working with York GP practices and York and Scarborough Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to support this group of patients within the community.

People with heart problems are at a higher risk of urgent admission to hospital and their condition can deteriorate rapidly, if not checked.

That’s why we’ll be launching a new clinic later this month, which will be run by GPs, specialist heart failure nurses and other clinicians at our Askham Bar Community Care Centre (formerly known to most local residents as the York Vaccination Centre).

We see this new service as an important link between the hospital and GP care for people with heart problems.

Our team of clinicians will see people at specialist clinics held in our new clinical building at the Askham Bar site, and our role will be to make sure their condition is stable and give them any necessary advice or treatment if we think it’s worsening.

The idea is to take the pressure off our GP practices and prevent people from being admitted into hospital.

It’s another fantastic example of health services across York working together collaboratively, which is something that we support very strongly.

Finally, last week we had a wonderful day of celebration to mark International Nurses’ Day, an annual event that fell on Thursday 12 May this year.

It was the perfect time to thank our nurses across the city for the huge contribution they make and we celebrated by giving them cupcakes and encouraging them to share some of their most poignant memories on our website and social media channels."