22.05.14
Majority of patients right to visit A&E
Only 15% of patients attending A&E departments could be seen by a GP without the need for a hospital assessment, according to a new report from the College of Emergency Medicine.
The report, conducted by Candesic, looked at what was happening in 12 A&E units over a 24-hour period in March, and found that 85% of patients who visited A&E were there appropriately and that only one in seven attendees could have been seen within the community.
Although the redirection figure of 15% is substantially less than the often quoted 40% ‘of patients who attend A&E departments and are discharged requiring no treatment’ it still equates to 2.1 million attendances.
Of the 15% of people who could be seen by a GP the largest sub-group was young children presenting with symptoms of minor illness, whereas the group for whom redirection was least probable was the elderly.
Dr Clifford Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said: “The fact that only 15% of attendees at Emergency Departments could be safely redirected to a primary care clinician without the need for Emergency Department assessment is a statistic that must be heeded by those who wish to reconfigure services.
“Providing a more appropriate resource for the 2.1 million patients represented by this figure would substantially decongest emergency departments.”
In order to tackle this issue, the College recommends locating a Primary Care Centre (also known as an Urgent Care Centre), which treats minor injuries and medical problems within a primary care setting, alongside the Emergency Department in hospitals.
Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said that for many years patients have been “wrongly criticised for abusing A&E departments” and “wasting NHS resources”, but the latest figures show that the majority of these patients are genuinely ill and require urgent medical treatment.
In a statement sent to NHE, a spokeswoman for NHS England said: “There have been several attempts to quantify the percentage of A&E attendances that could be readily managed elsewhere, with estimates ranging between 10 and 45%.
"Variation in these figures is due to the A&E departments studied, the types of patients attending, locally available services and the subjective judgement of those involved in giving the clinical opinion. This new figure from the College of Emergency Medicine therefore falls within the expected range.”
The spokeswoman added that there is value in placing GPs alongside A&E units, but stated that other measures should be considered, such as better self-care advice, an enhanced NHS 111 and ambulance services capable of offering skilled treatment at the scene.
(Image: c. Rui Vieira)
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