Urgent care in North East London
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Healthwatch Barking & Dagenham, Healthwatch City of London, Healthwatch Hackney, Healthwatch Havering, Healthwatch Newham, Healthwatch Redbridge, Healthwatch Tower Hamlets and Healthwatch Waltham Forest analysed the comments they received about access to urgent and emergency care for the period October 2021 and February 2023. During this period they heard from 1,448 people.
Patient struggle to get urgent GP appointments. This results in diminished trust in their GP and more negative perception of surgeries.
Urgent care services such as A&E or Urgent Treatment Centres cannot deal with in-depth treatment of long-term conditions and cannot give specialist referrals. People who cannot get GP appointments remain without treatment until they experience a (possibly avoidable) acute episode.
Urgent Treatment Centres are often accessed after a call to 111. Despite patients understanding that they made an appointment through 111, they have to wait multiple hours. Patients say that UTCs are disorganised, reception staff are rude and the service is generally unsupportive.
Ambulances take a long time to arrive, but once they do arrive they provide a good, caring and efficient service.
People wait for a long time in A&E, often in very uncomfortable conditions Some patients report that their symptoms are not taken seriously.
Waiting for a hospital bed can take even longer, because of shortages- but once admitted, patients usually get reasonably good care.