North London urgent emergency care partnership engagement summary

This report summarises a year-long programme of engagement undertaken in 2017/18 by the five local Healthwatch in the North London Partners area. It is in three sections, summarising the local engagement on different topics, a co-design event on 7 day services and the input of a reference group of local citizens. The North London Partners Urgent and Emergency Care Programme is focused around four broad work-streams: Integrated urgent care, admissions avoidance, simplified discharge, last phase of life. The first of these, integrated urgent care, was the subject of a major programme of engagement in previous years, so was not included as a specific topic in the work for 2017/18.

Healthwatch spoke to 109 people, 38 via telephone surveys and 71 via face-to-face surveys. Participants were mainly Islington, Haringey and Enfield residents using North Middlesex Hospital, Royal Free London, Whittington Health and UCLH.

To support the engagement programme and to ensure that it has impact, a Citizen’s Reference Group was set up. The group will continue over 2018. They will be monitoring the implementation of the codesigned project action plans, and helping to design further engagement on implementation of the programme.