Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what processes his Department has in place to make sure that patients access the correct health services to reduce unnecessary A&E admissions.

‘Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View’ sets out a plan to better integrate general practitioner (GP), community, mental health and hospital services and work more closely with home care and care homes so that people avoid hospital stays where possible.

NHS England is driving forward health service transformation through new care models such as the Primary Care Home, which brings together a range of health and social care professionals to provide enhanced personalised and preventative care for their local community and through the Enhanced Health in Care Homes vanguards which are working with care homes to provide joined up primary, community and secondary care, and social care to residents of care and nursing homes, via a range of in reach services.

The Better Care Fund (BCF) has incentivised local areas to work together better, pooling budgets to join up health and care services. As part of the BCF funding requirements, local areas have to produce data to show that they are reducing the number of unplanned acute admissions to hospital.

By March 2019 the whole of England will be covered by a fully Integrated Urgent Care Service which will improve patient access to services that include evening and weekend appointments with GPs and a clinical advice and treatment service accessed through the NHS 111 telephone number to ensure that patients receive timely treatment advice.