Experiences of patients attending A&E at the Royal London Hospital

This is a report by Healthwatch Tower Hamlets. The project looks at patient experience at A+E and the Urgent Treatment Centre at the Royal London Hospital.

The project aimed to collect feedback from patients walking into the A&E, UTC or Children’s A&E at the hospital to help understand their prior experience and if they would accept a redirection to primary care services.

A total of 425 patients shared their feedback.

Key findings include

• GP or A&E? - struggles between accessing the GP and deciding to attend A+E
• Patient Experience Before A&E - looking at why patients had come to A+E
• Redirection to Primary Care Services - what are the attitudes to alternatives

There are recommendations in this report

1. Improving access to urgent, ideally same-day, GP appointments for people aged 16-54 with no disabilities who are more likely to attend A&E because they cannot get an urgent appointment with their GP.

 a. Creating a promotional campaign to raise awareness of improved access to urgent GP  appointments using multiple communication channels and tools to reach the target audience  and reduce A&E attendance.

2. Creating a promotional campaign about NHS 111 services to encourage patients to contact the service for advice before going to A&E and creating tailored campaigns to promote services to people from different backgrounds.

3. Informing patients about alternative services to drop in or self-refer to, such as pharmacies, sexual health clinics, and Tower Hamlets Talking Therapies to ensure that patients can receive timely care even when appointments at their GP practice are not immediately available.

4. Raising awareness around local Pharmacy Services to educate people on the minor conditions qualified pharmacists can treat to reduce A&E attendance and creating tailored campaigns to promote services to people from different backgrounds.

There are no follow up actions in this report.