What do local people think should be done to improve urgent and emergency care?
Download (PDF 122.29 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Barnet, Camden, Enfield, and Islington held a number of discussion groups with people in March and April 2017 to hear about their experiences with urgent and emergency care. This was done as part of NHS’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan, to improve the local provision of healthcare.
The four Healthwatch organisations spoke to 117 people of varying demographics in different settings. Respondents included Bangladeshi, Cypriot, and Gypsy Roma women. Also, a group of Polish men & women, visually impaired people, a group of LGBTQ residents and other mixed groups.
The report identifies some key issues in the area including the lack of GP appointments, cultural barriers and poor communication.
The biggest concern was about the lack of awareness of services and not understanding the options available. Some had poor experience of A&E (notably in Enfield) whilst others were frustrated with the lack of coordination between services.
Positive feedback was also received about A&E with some users having a good experience, especially for children's services, and others finding it a good place to access experts.
Many recommendations were suggested by the service users as part of ‘user driven solutions.’ The biggest focus was preventing the need for emergency care by improving GP access, providing better community services and having ‘joined up services.’ Some other major themes were raising awareness about services out there such as NHS 111, elderly people need to know what options they have, and improving staff training especially around disability awareness.
More responsibility from patients was also seen as a recommendation: “I would charge people if they did not attend an appointment with their GP and turned up at A&E instead.”
The summary of the report was shared with North Central London Urgent and Emergency Care programme board, to help plan improvements in the future. Plans were made to hold more discussion with the public.