Emergency Care departments around the country are struggling under the level of people that are seeking care by attending them. Previous research has show that a large proportion of people would have been better served by going to their GP or did not need healthcare at all. As a result, resources are used supporting them that are taken away from others who do need urgent care.
Working closely with the Urgent Care theme we have been exploring how best to identify these ‘non-urgent’ individuals, who they are, and what sort of health issues they are seeking help for. The aim is to inform commissioners and NHS decision makers about which groups might need better support to access appropriate services.
More details of the work done so far are available on the ARC blog (https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk/news-events-and-media/blogs/overflow-in-urgent-care)
