Accident and Emergency Departments: Standards

(asked on 20th February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce accident and emergency waiting times.


Answered by
Steve Barclay Portrait
Steve Barclay
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
This question was answered on 28th February 2018

Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) is one of the National Health Service’s main national service improvement priorities set out in the Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View, with a focus on improving national accident and emergency (A&E) performance. A number of approaches have, and are being introduced to reduce the pressure on A&E departments, reduce waiting times and improve patient flow.

As at December 2017, 98.5% (134 out of 136) Type 1 A&Es had front-door clinical streaming in place, diverting people with more minor illnesses to more appropriate services better suited to their needs, supported by additional funding of £100 million, as announced by the Chancellor in the spring budget 2017.

The transformation of NHS 111 services as part of the UEC programme is also helping to reduce pressure on A&E services. In 2017 NHS 111 answered more than 14 million calls, an increase of 4% compared with the previous 12 months. Around 40% of calls now receive clinical input, the highest it has ever been and wherever possible, the caller will have their health issue dealt with there and then over the phone by the clinician without the need to go to another NHS service.

In addition NHS England has run a range of public facing marketing campaigns to inform the public about services that are available to them and to encourage them to access the right service for their needs. These campaigns are intended to help reduce pressures on the urgent and emergency care system, including A&E departments.

The latest published data for January 2018 shows that the majority of patients continue to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival at A&E departments.

NHS England and NHS Improvement published their operational planning guidance to clinical commission groups and trusts on ‘Refreshing NHS Plans for 2018/19’ on Friday 2 February. The planning guidance sets out performance expectations against the four hour standard; aggregate performance above 90% by September 2018, the majority of providers achieving 95% by March 2019, and with the whole of the NHS returning to 95% within the course of 2019.

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