Feedback Report: Emergency Departments in Devon

This is a report by Healthwatch Devon, Healthwatch Plymouth and Healthwatch Torbay.

HWDPT staff and volunteers conducted conversations in the four emergency departments (EDs) across Devon: Torbay Hospital (Torquay), Derriford Hospital (Plymouth), North Devon District Hospital (Barnstaple) and Royal Devon University Hospital (Exeter).

The HWDPT visiting team, made up of Healthwatch staff and trained volunteers, gathered patient feedback through conversations, which identified if patients had tried to access other NHS services to seek advice or treatment before attending ED, or if ED was the patients first choice, and if patients were aware of alternative services available, especially during weekends and evenings.

During conversations, patients were asked by the HWDPT visiting team, if they were happy to provide their name, postcode and date of birth, so clinicians could review their experience and decision making to attend ED, alongside their patient record. This would provide additional information to NHS Devon to help understand if the NHS could have supported patients more effectively. HWDPT only shared patient information for those patients who agreed for NHS to look at their patient records alongside their experience gathered by HWDPT. Clinicians within each Acute Hospital site carried out the clinical validation work.

A total 511 people gave their views from 34 visits to the different sites.

Key findings:

• It is clear from the overarching findings that 98% of people are aware of alternative services in the way NHS Devon advises and promotes – this means calling 111, using MIU/UTCs or contacting their GP prior to going to an ED.
• On average, 68% of people accessed their GP service first, and 20% accessed more than one service prior to attending an ED.
• The findings are consistent with the messages from previous engagement in 2021, and as such we will continue to positively promote urgent care services to encourage people to access services prior to visiting ED.
• Whilst the findings show that people are aware of the alternative services available to them and are using them, the insight within this report suggests that alternative services may not be meeting patient expectations and that ED is the place people are choosing to seek further opinions or support.

There are recommendations in this report.

• Take the key findings to help inform future communication plans to support people get the right care in the right place, utilising the demographic data to target audiences more effectively, using the most recognised communication channels.
• The experience of patients will be used to support the development of future urgent care services in Devon.
• Use the patient experience to support a further, more clinically focused validation process to understand if peoples clinical needs can be met in alternative care provisions.
• To use this report to develop future engagement approaches with EDs across Devon to understand as well as how people access services, if what they access meets their expectations, aligned to their clinical needs.
• Use the findings to look at how NHS Devon promotes the range of services available in the community for people prior to attending an ED.
• To develop future involvement methods to engage with patients who were not spoken with during this engagement, such as those following major trauma or life threatening conditions following their discharge. 
• To ensure that observations made by HW about ED environments are shared with the relevant trust for consideration.

There are no follow up actions in this report. However the provider has responded.