16.12.14
Next phase of the Emergency Care Review ‘fundamental’ to its success – Prof Keogh
The next phase of the Urgent and Emergency Care Review will be ‘fundamental’ to its success, according to Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, national medical director at NHS England.
In a paper on the progress and plans for the implementation phase of the Review, which will be presented at NHS England’s monthly board meeting tomorrow, Prof Keogh said that essential to the implementation will be a “model of assurance that tracks progress”, whilst ensuring that “local areas are engaged and central to the design”.
He added that forthcoming planning guidance will set out NHS England’s expectations of commissioners and providers in relation to urgent and emergency care, including the formation and operation of urgent and emergency care networks, which will build upon existing system resilience groups (SRGs).
SRGs are the forum where all the partners across the health and social care system come together to undertake the regular planning of service delivery.
It was noted that advice on the formation and operation of urgent and emergency care networks will be supported by a ‘footprint’ tool that will allow CCGs to analyse their localities and decide the geographical boundary and composition of their networks. “Advice will follow in summer 2015 for those networks to identify those hospitals that have network roles in providing specialist service,” said Prof Keogh.
Urgent and emergency care is one of the new models of care set out in the Five Year Forward View. Prof Keogh noted that the Review proposes a fundamental shift in the way urgent and emergency care services are provided, and will be “the first major practical demonstration of these new models of care”.
He added that there a number of efficiencies that could arise from the Review, such as enhanced Ambulance See and Treat and Hear and Treat, with the potential for savings to be generated through fewer ambulance conveyances and attendances at A&E.
Prof Keogh also stated that emergency centre/specialised emergency centre hospitals having network roles in providing specialist services could lead to “resultant economies of scale across the network footprint via consolidation of operating costs”.
In addition, he suggests that if the Minor Ailments Scheme is extended to all Community Pharmacies then this could lead to a lower demand for General Practice met instead in Community Pharmacy with their lower unit costs.
“Our ongoing engagement and collaborative working will also ensure that the Review products will be grounded in reality, have meaning to commissioners and be useful in the commissioning of ‘radically transformed’ urgent and emergency care services,” stated Prof Keogh.
He added that to support all of this work, the Review intends to identify a single set of measures about what happens to patients who need urgent and emergency care and how measures should be used by different people in the system, by summer 2015.
(Image: c. Joe Giddens/PA Archive)
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