Urgent Care

Acute Healthcare has been working with Chase Farm Hospital, providing a primary care led service within the A&E department. The aim of this project has been to manage inappropriate attendances at the A&E department, where patients could have been seen and managed in primary care. Our clinicians, will see, assess and treat patients accordingly, and sign post to other primary care services as agreed with the Trust and PCT. To date the outcome of this project has been a reduction in the number of patients waiting to be seen by the emergency team, whereby increasing capacity within the department to see and treat the accident and emergency cases, as well as achieving the 4 hour A&E wait target.

This project has identified gaps in primary care service provision and accessibility, and an internal audit completed by Acute Healthcare has provided data to understand patient flow, times of attendances, reason for attendance, levels of demands, and the outcomes of those patients seen by the Acute Healthcare team. This can be used for future service planning to ensure services meet the needs of the patients in primary and emergency care, as well as reflecting on the need for educational material to inform the public of services available to them, to reduce the minor aliments demand currently on A&E services.

Throughout the duration of this project, our team has developed a robust integrated approach between primary and secondary care. This has enabled closer working relationships, streamlining of patient pathways and patient education.