THE second major NHS contract in North Yorkshire to be awarded to private healthcare provider Northern Doctors Urgent Care within a week has been announced.

NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has signed a new deal with the Newcastle-based Northern Doctors Urgent Care to provide a range of out of hours services for the community they serve.

It follows an announcement last week that NHS Scarborough and Ryedale CCG had signed a contract with Northern Doctors Urgent Care to provide “a new fully integrated urgent care service”, including urgent care centres at Scarborough Hospital and Malton Hospital.

In the case of NHS Vale of York the decision to award the contract to NDUC means that a single organisation will provide out of hours care across the entire patch.

Previously, out of hours care was provided by different organisations in different areas.

Ryedale used to be covered by the private healthcare provider Primecare, Pocklington used to be covered by the Hull-based NHS Humber Foundation Trust and York used to be covered by Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust.

The new service will launch on 1 April 2015.