Urgent and Emergency Care: Engagement report

In July 2015, it was announced that there would be eight new vanguards for urgent and emergency care. This included the West Yorkshire Urgent and Emergency Care Network that would oversee, with local partners, the improvement of urgent and emergency care for more than three million people in West Yorkshire. The Urgent and Emergency Care vanguard now falls under the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), and is one of the priorities for the STP. West Yorkshire and Harrogate has also been identified as the only urgent and emergency care ‘acceleration zone’ nationally in September 2016. As part of this work, it was identified that whilst in previous years a significant amount of engagement had already taken place both nationally and locally. 

To understand why patients access urgent and emergency care services, such as A&E; there was still a need to undertake a short engagement exercise to validate this existing data. Healthwatch organisations across West Yorkshire and the Harrogate District embarked on engagement over a four week period, from 5 October – 2 November 2016. A survey was designed to understand why patients access urgent and emergency care services, such as A&E.  They heard from 1,306 people.

The majority of respondents were seen during 8am-8pm (84.7%) on a weekday, primarily Monday to Thursday (78.2%). 81.9% (1042) attended A&E, and 6.1% (78) attended a walk-in centre. As the majority of people attended during times when other services were available, it raises the question as to why people chose to attend an urgent and emergency care service rather than access other services.

Of those that decided to attend an urgent and emergency care service (37.1% of respondents), the main reasons were they had a medical condition that they felt required to be seen urgently (64.3%), they felt that they might need tests or treatment that they wouldn’t be able to access elsewhere (21.0%), and 16.9% decided to attend because they couldn’t obtain a GP appointment.

Of those that were advised to attend an urgent and emergency care service (46.4% of respondents), 45.5% had been told to do so by their GP practice, with 22.1% being advised to do so by 111. And nearly all (80%) felt that this was the right advice.

29.2% had gone somewhere else or tried to go somewhere else prior to attending an urgent and emergency care service. The majority had either seen their GP and been advised to go to hospital or they had tried to get an appointment with their GP but could not be seen quickly enough