Spotlight on urgent care

Our return to the four-hour emergency standard was in sharp focus last week as we held our first urgent care summit.

About 100 colleagues gathered to discuss this significant change, which means ensuring that as many patients as possible are either admitted, treated or discharged within four hours of arriving in the emergency department.

Evidence suggests that the longer patients wait in emergency departments past four hours, the more likely they are to have poorer clinical outcomes.

We have not reported against the four-hour standard since 2019, when we began piloting alternative performance metrics, but will begin to do so from 15 May.

Chief Executive Neil Dardis told the summit that the four-hour standard was a barometer for the state of the wider health and care system locally. He stressed that everyone at the Trust has a role to play in achieving the 76% target – in particular, by continuing to embrace our Every day matters campaign to minimise delays to care and discharge. And he urged those present to speak to their teams about what they can do to in their own departments to maximise patient flow.

The summit also heard about some of the good work already ongoing within the Trust, including the implementation of our new internal professional standards for non-elective attendances and the expansion of same day emergency care (SDEC) pathways.

We are also working with our system partners to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and ED attendances and expedite safe discharges to maintain capacity in our hospitals.