The pressures the NHS is currently facing are like none we’ve seen before. From difficulty discharging patients to ongoing flu and covid demands, and a record elective care backlog, hospital bed occupancy rates have hit new highs. In response to these pressures, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England recently issued a new delivery plan for urgent and emergency services, outlining how the NHS can achieve its goal of improving wait times and meeting patient demand.

The main areas of focus for improvement include:

• Increasing hospital capacity
• Recruiting a bigger workforce
• Speeding up hospital discharge times
• Establishing more community - based services
• Making sure that people are able to access the appropriate care first time.
  

Amid staff shortages and limited funding, translating these goals into actions might be easier said than done. However, there are a number of achievable steps that every NHS organisation can take to move closer towards reaching each target. We’ve outlined practical advice below on the 5 key areas of focus to help you put the urgent and emergency care delivery plan into action.

Increasing capacity

One of the biggest areas of need outlined by the plan is increasing hospital capacity. This winter, pressures placed on NHS staff and services were so extreme that there was frequently insufficient capacity to meet demand. Whilst increasing bed space is one way of tackling this - with the plan promising to provide 5000 more hospital beds and 800 new ambulances this year - streamlining referral processes to ensure maximum efficiency is just as essential for delivering increased capacity in the long run.

In practice, this means supporting the maintenance of capacity by streamlining the flow of patients entering urgent care in the first place. Streamlining referrals by better connecting services using digital tools and integrated communication channels is an important first step. We can overcome the inhibitive silos between primary and secondary care through better access to advice and guidance - enabling clinicians to collaborate and triage patients more effectively, and ensuring that patients who can be treated in primary care are not sent to hospital unnecessarily. As a result, we can reduce demand on emergency services and free up hospital beds for those who need them.

Growing the workforce

With more than 1 in 10 NHS roles vacant, and significant mental health sickness rates, it is clear that to support increased urgent care delivery, staff retention has a huge role to play. We need to create better communication channels that support clinicians to work together, rather than in isolation, and reduce the admin burden they individually face. By doing this, we can make sure that colleagues across different services feel supported, and can make shared referral decisions in real-time to guarantee the best outcomes for patients. Reducing manual admin will also free up clinicians’ time to spend with patients, helping them more easily meet rising demand and easing the pressures on their workload.

Improving discharge

The plan outlines ways to work jointly with all system partners to strengthen discharge processes as a means of freeing up hospital beds for those who need them. In December 2022, there were an average of 13,440 patients a day in hospital who no longer needed to be there. In many cases, this was due to a lack of available intermediate or social care. To create smoother discharge and more flexible treatment pathways, we need to establish more streamlined communication channels to help services work together and triage patients to the right place, faster.

Information silos between different healthcare organisations are frequently preventing effective collaboration from happening at the necessary scale. This often results in unnecessary referrals to busy wait lists and delays effective patient triage. By allowing pressure to build on individual services, this further exacerbates hospital discharge times by making it harder for patients to access care outside of hospital. We must establish more integrated and interoperable systems that enable data and information to be shared more easily between different services. This will enable services to work together more easily and streamline patient triage to improve the flow of patients through the system and free up hospital space for those who need it.

Expanding and better joining up health and care outside of hospital

Boosting capacity in out-of-hospital care is also flagged as a priority in the NHSE plan. One way in which this is already being successfully achieved in many areas is through the creation of virtual wards, enabling clinicians to provide support and monitor patients remotely. To ensure remote care delivery can be safely and sustainably delivered, we must empower patients with the technology to manage their own conditions at home, where appropriate, and support clinicians with access to comprehensive data to help them effectively facilitate more at-home care.

Introducing more interoperable systems is key to allowing this data to be easily and securely shared between all relevant clinicians involved in the patient’s treatment. Direct access and detailed oversight of this data will enable clinicians to consult a wider picture of each patient’s health, improving continuity of care if they are moved between services. Meanwhile, this data oversight will make it easier to deliver a broader range of treatment pathways remotely, helping further free up space in urgent care settings.

Making it easier to access the right care

The NHSE Delivery Plan also outlines the need for healthcare to work more effectively for the public, so that people can more easily access the care they need, when they need it.

Through access to timely advice and guidance, clinicians across primary and secondary care can work together to streamline the referral process and triage patients to the most appropriate form of care more quickly. At Cinapsis, we’re working with a number of NHS partners across England to support clinicians with the tools to achieve this, speeding up access to urgent treatment for those who need it and helping those who don’t access the right support for them - for example, within primary care or the community - much sooner.

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The NHSE urgent and emergency care plan demonstrates a service-wide awareness of the need for immediate, tangible action to tackle the current crisis. By focusing on practical, individual steps, organisations can translate the most recent plan into genuine, sustainable progress. As a result, we can generate broader collaborative care, helping tackle the pressures and demand on emergency services, while improving outcomes for patients and clinicians alike.

Want to find out more about how Cinapsis can support your organisation to streamline referrals and boost service collaboration? Connect with a member of our team.