Transforming urgent and emergency care

NHS and social care staff in Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge (BHR) are working together to deliver the best possible urgent and emergency care (UEC) to our community, but our system is under increasing pressure.

Local partners want to improve UEC services, so residents get the right care in the right place, first time – and no time is wasted by patients or our staff.

We know too many people still go to A&E when their condition or illness is not life-threatening or an emergency, and this means too many people in real need of emergency care end up waiting for several hours and may be admitted to hospital when they could have been cared for just as well, or even better, in their own home and with the support of community or social care services closer to home.

Local people have told us that the current urgent and emergency care system is confusing, fragmented and difficult to understand. Our clinicians and staff are struggling to cope with rising demand, and the financial challenges we face locally mean we need to find more efficient ways to deliver high quality, safe, urgent and emergency care, seven days a week.

So what are our plans? We’ve listened to local people, clinicians and staff and learned from best practice locally and across the country. We want to:

• Provide a more responsive service closer to home for people with urgent care needs (when your issue is not an emergency and your life is not at risk)
• Make it easier for you to find the help you need and have trust and confidence in the advice you receive
• Improve our NHS 111 service, so more people can speak to a clinician or even be booked into their own GP practice if they need to be seen the same day
• Make sure people who walk into an A&E or Urgent Care Centre are quickly given a clinical assessment and if they do not need to be at A&E, they are redirected to the right place
• Provide paramedics with better access to expert clinical advice to help them decide if their patient really needs to go to A&E or if they can be cared for safely at home
• Make sure people who are admitted to hospital are able to go home quickly and safely, with the right support in place. Patients will be involved in the planning of their return home.

We’re focusing on these areas because patients, clinicians and staff agree that we should. We’ve looked at the evidence in local data about how people use services and why. We explored what other areas do, so we learn from their experiences. We want to use best practice, but also be bold enough to try new things and make them work for us.

We will continue to talk to and listen to people who live and work in our area, and work with them to develop our plans.