Baroness Masham of Ilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Masham of Ilton on 2016-02-04.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to develop the model of co-location of urgent and emergency primary care service with accident and emergency departments.
Lord Prior of Brampton
In August 2015, NHS England published Safer, faster, better: good practice in delivering urgent and emergency care. A copy is attached. This provides guidance to help frontline providers and commissioners re-design urgent and emergency care services, including considering locating urgent care centres in emergency departments.
Safer, faster, better notes that urgent care centres co-located with emergency departments provide an opportunity to stream patients with less serious illnesses and injuries to a service that is resourced to meet their needs, while reducing crowding in emergency departments. It also sets out that to preserve flow, urgent care centre staff and cubicles must wherever possible be entirely separated from the majors/admission stream and that where urgent care centres are co-located with emergency departments, there must be appropriate integration, with shared governance arrangements and clearly defined protocols for the two-way transfer of patients.
