You can download an electronic version of the report here: Urgent Care Report
Also link to HSJ article by Kaye McIntosh: HSJ Article
This report is supported by a broad coalition of influential bodies, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association’s GPs Committee (see their letter at the front of the report), the NHS Alliance and Primary Care Contracting, as well as being funded and supported by the Department of Health.
Urgent care in general practice has not had the same policy focus compared to high profile policy areas such as hospital emergency care and managing long-term conditions. Yet responding efficiently to demand for same-day care brings significant benefits for patients, practices and for the wider healthcare system. Primary care commissioners must tackle the major issues presented by emergency admissions if commissioning strategies are to be deemed successful.
This report throws a spotlight on the differing ways urgent care is, and can be, managed in day-to-day general practice, offering key insights into how we can all improve our patients’ care and access making best use of existing resources and identifying areas and practices that require additional resources.. There are real-life examples of better management of urgent care making a difference: reducing attendance at A&E and emergency hospital admissions, offering a better service to patients and enabling GPs and primary care staff to take control of their workload.
It offers practical advice and support to practice managers and GPs across the country. Rather than setting national targets that inevitably fail to reflect the unique patient population, geography, and skill mix of individual practices, it encourages them to look at their own processes, make changes and set their own realistic and appropriate local standard, within their available resources.
If you would like to know more about this initiative, please click HERE
The Primary Care Foundation was established to support the development of best practice in primary and urgent care. The three Directors bring different skills and perspectives to understanding primary and urgent health care - for more details click below:
We also work with a number of associates
The benchmark of out of hours services has been published. To interact with the data and download reports CLICK HERE. To read the overall analysis of the findings CLICK HERE. The benchmark covers more than two thirds of the PCT areas in England and, for the first time, participants have agreed that the data should be published in a way that allows individual services to be identified. To read the press release CLICK HERE.
Rick Stern is to take up the role of Chief Executive of the NHS Alliance from 16 April 2012. He will still be working for half the week as a Director of the Primary Care Foundation
Our latest report ‘Breaking the mould without breaking the system: new ideas and resources for clinical commissioners on the journey towards integrated 24/7 urgent care’ is now available to download CLICK HERE. It is published in partnership with the NHS Alliance and will be formally launched at a session at the NHS Alliance annual conference in Manchester on 1st December 2011.
We are working with increasing numbers of practice to improve access and urgent care in general practice. If you would like to know more about our web based tool and customised reports based on a week of practice data and join over 300 practices across the UK,please email Rick Stern at rick.stern@primarycarefoundation.co.uk
For an independent view of our work with practices on access and urgent care CLICK HERE for the article in the HSJ on 24th November 2011
4th round of the out of hours benchmark. You should be receiving final data for validation soon and the first open set of openly available results will be available from this website in April 2012.