Enfield CCG is reviewing local urgent care services to make sure they are meeting the needs of our local population. We want to hear your views on how you access and use urgent care services.
Urgent care services are the services that are there to look after you when you have an injury or an unplanned illness and you need immediate advice and support. Enfield CCG commissions a range of urgent care services so that patients in Enfield can access care for non-life threatening illnesses and injuries 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Please fill in our survey and tell us more about your experience of local urgent care services: www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/PH6F8/
This review begins on 19 February 2016 and ends on 3 April 2016
What is urgent care?
By urgent care we mean the range of health services that people can access immediately for advice, diagnosis and treatment when they have a non-life threatening illness or injury. Urgent care services help people that have unplanned health needs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Excluded from the definition of urgent care is emergency care which supports ‘immediate or life threatening conditions, or serious injuries or illnesses’. Accident and Emergency (A&E) and the London Ambulance Service are emergency care services – NOT urgent care services. However, they are often used inappropriately for urgent care needs.
About urgent care in Enfield
Enfield CCG is responsible for commissioning urgent care services for our local population of 320,524 people (ONS mid 2013 estimates). We commission a range of services from different providers to ensure that patients can access urgent care 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.
Why we are reviewing urgent care services
Over the last few years, demand for NHS services has been rising across the country, particularly for services with faster access like urgent or emergency care services. We have decided that we would like to review local urgent care services to make sure they are meeting the needs of our local population. We want to find out more about how local people access urgent care services and their experience of them. We will use this information to guide our future commissioning decision on local urgent care services.
The current issues that this urgent care review will explore are:
- Growing demand and how this could be managed
- The range of urgent care and if there is any duplication of services.
- How patients choose when to use urgent care services and why, as well as how they navigate the system
What’s involved in this review?
The CCG will be reviewing performance and other internal data available to us as commissioners to build a picture of how urgent care services are being currently being used. During this review we also will ask people how they decide what services to access and what their experience was via a survey.
We have included reference to emergency services in the survey as we recognise that some people are visiting Accident and Emergency services instead of other available services and we want to know why this is happening. However it is important to note that this report will not make any recommendations for changes to local emergency services.
We will publish a report of the urgent care review with a summary of all the data collected at the end of the review period.
