The country's biggest out-of-hours doctors service is about to expand into Ryedale and parts of the Vale of York.

From early next month practices at Pickering, Kirkbymoorside, Helmsley, Ampleforth, Easingwold, Stillington, Tollerton, and Sherburn, near Malton, will form the new Ryedale Rota of the North Yorkshire Emergency Doctors (NYED).

Practices at Coxwold and Terrington which are already members of NYED will transfer to the new rota.

Patients calling a practice which is part of the co-operative out-of-hours will get a message giving a number for NYED, or be diverted straight through to the emergency doctors.

NYED has 441 GP members covering a population of one million extending from Settle in the west through Harrogate to York and Selby, and to parts of East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

Doctors working for the service are based at primary care centres (PCCs) throughout its area, and it also has a fleet of specially equipped cars.

A new PCC will be set up at Malton Hospital and a part-time one at Easingwold's St Monica's Hospital, and the Ryedale Rota will be served by two new four-wheel drive vehicles.

NYED general manager Mark Cockerton said he hoped to extend to Malton possibly three months after the Ryedale Rota started.

He added: "We are delighted to be able to offer these practices the opportunity to join the majority of doctors in North Yorkshire that are already members of the co-operative, and looking forward to providing quality out-of-hours care to patients in that area.

"There is a benefit to doctors, but I believe firmly there is a benefit to patients as well."

Tests would be done to see if satellite phones were needed for communication in the Ryedale Rota area, though Mr Cockerton said its current use of mobile phones and land lines, computer communications systems and pagers provided fail-safe links in its other remote areas.

Dr Dan Cottingham, of the Pickering Medical Practice, who will be the NYED council representative for the Ryedale Rota, said he was confident it would benefit both doctors and patients, adding the service had coped well with high pressure of the Christmas-Millennium period.

He said doctors, particularly from smaller Ryedale practices, would have to cover fewer night shifts. "It means we are less tired during the day, which can only mean better services for the patients."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.