Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps are being taken to develop the model of co-location of urgent and emergency primary care services with A&E.

In August 2015, NHS England published Safer, faster, better: good practice in delivering urgent and emergency care, which can be found here:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/trans-uec.pdf

This provides guidance to help frontline providers and commissioners re-design urgent and emergency care services, including considering locating urgent care centres in emergency departments. Safer, faster, better notes that urgent care centres co-located with emergency departments provide an opportunity to stream patients with less serious illnesses and injuries to a service that is resourced to meet their needs, while reducing crowding in emergency departments. It also sets out that to preserve flow, urgent care centre staff and cubicles must wherever possible be entirely separated from those used for patients with life-threatening or serious injuries or illnesses or who are going to be admitted. The guidance also includes that where urgent care centres are co-located with emergency departments, there must be appropriate integration, with shared governance arrangements and clearly defined protocols for the two-way transfer of patients.