Eight 'vanguards' launch urgent and emergency care transformation

The scheme, announced as part of last years’ NHS Five Year Forward View plan is for urgent care will be delivered by GPs, pharmacists, community teams, ambulance services, NHS 111, social care and others, and through patients being given support and education to manage their own conditions. Another aim is to break down boundaries between physical and mental health to improve the quality of care and experience for all.

The eight vanguards will share investment from a £200m transformation fund announced last Autumn.

Six vanguards will cover smaller local systems which may include hospitals and surrounding GP practices and social care, while two network vanguards will be working with much larger populations to integrate care on a greater scale.

This will include plans such as those in North-East England where services across the region will be aligned to a single joined-up system to ensure all patients including those living in remote rural locations will get the care they need, including a rapid specialist opinion should they need one.

The West Yorkshire network will launch mobile treatment services and, working with mental health providers and the police, create rapid crisis response and street triage services.

Other vanguards, such as Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, will focus on establishing same-day response teams with GPs, acute home-visiting and crisis response services, community nursing, an older people’s assessment unit and a new urgent care centre.

Speaking on Friday, NHS England Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, said: “Starting today, the NHS will begin joining up the often confusing array of A&E, GP out of hours, minor injuries clinics, ambulance services and 111 so that patients know where they can get urgent help easily and effectively, 7 days a week. That’s why we’re backing what our frontline nurses, doctors and other staff, in partnership with local communities, to radically redesign our urgent and emergency services.”

Professor Chris Moran, NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Trauma Care, said: “It’s enormously rewarding for the NHS and the people it serves that in just three years we have seen a fifty per cent increase in the odds of survival with life-threatening injuries, that’s hundreds more patients saved since the networks started.”

Professor Keith Willett, NHS England’s Director of Acute Care, who is leading the Urgent and Emergency Care transformation, said: “This proves a modern NHS needs a very different approach and shows, we can transform patient care.

“These networks  and new vanguards will support and improve all our local urgent and emergency care services, such as A&E departments, urgent care centres, GPs, NHS 111 and community, social care and ambulance services, so no one is working isolated from expert advice 24 hours a day.”

“All over the country there are pockets of best practice yielding enormous benefits; but to ensure our urgent care services are sustainable for the future every region must begin delivering faster, better and safer care. Now it is time for the new urgent and emergency care vanguards to design the best solutions locally.”

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