A&E Visit Survey and Research report

Healthwatch Cheshire East and Healthwatch Cheshire West conducted a priorities survey in spring 2017 to establish what people felt were their key areas of concern. They decided to gain a snapshot view of the 3 A&E departments in Cheshire to understand he route patients had taken to access in A&E, and assess how this compares to the perception that people are seemingly using A&E as their first port of call with patients presenting at their local department with problems that are not necessarily appropriate for A&E and would be better served by non-urgent care or self-care.  They worked with seven other Healthwatch to design the questionnaires.  They visited nine A&E departments and received 345 responses.

Key points across the whole of the 345 responses from the North Mersey, Cheshire and Wirral, and Alliance LDS areas include:

• 51% or more than half of people attending A&E had been advised to do so by another NHS professional (GP, consultant, NHS 111 etc.); 40% of whom were advised to attend by their GP
• Nearly 1 in 10 (8%) told us that a reason for attending was that they couldn’t get a GP appointment (of these 2/3 had tried, 1/3 hadn’t tried) 
• 30% said that the reasons were because it was too urgent to wait

Key points across the 107 responses in Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East include:

• The most common reason for A&E attendance across all areas was that the patient felt the problem was too urgent to wait, with 26% of all attendees across Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East citing this. 
• Almost 1 in 4 people (24%) were being advised by their GP to seek treatment in A&E. At Leighton and Macclesfield hospitals, this was the second most common reason cited for attending A&E, and the third most common at the Countess of Chester. 
• Nearly half (47%) of all respondents who were advised by an NHS service were advised by their GP. The second most common NHS services advising A&E attendance are walk-in centres and the NHS 111 service.
• Across Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East, almost 2 out of every 3 (64%) respondents had not previously visited A&E in the past 12 months.

Key findings from the 16 responses from Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East to the ‘After your A&E visit’ survey:

• Almost 9 out of 10 (88%) respondents had been treated and discharged within the 4-hour waiting target.
• 81% of respondents rated their experience of A&E as 4 or 5 out of 5, with no respondents at any of the three hospitals in Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East rating their care as lower than 3 out of 5.