Professor Keith Willett, National Director for Acute Episodes of Care, and Professor Jonathan Benger, National Clinical Director for Urgent Care, have led the Urgent & Emergency Care review on behalf of NHS Medical Director Sir Bruce Keogh.
In early 2015, the South West SCN brought together senior managers and clinicians from across the South West to discuss the recommendations of the U&EC Review, including the establishment of networks for urgent and emergency care
Guided by the review team and by NHS England colleagues, two Urgent & Emergency Care Networks have been established in the South West:
- The Severn Network – covering the populations of Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swindon CCGs
- The Peninsula Network – including the populations of North East and West Devon (NEW Devon), South Devon and Torbay and Kernow CCGs
The Urgent and Emergency Care Networks will operate strategically, covering a footprint of 1-5 million (depending on population density, rurality, and local factors). Their purpose is to improve the consistency and quality of urgent and emergency care by bringing together SRGs (System resilience Groups) and other stakeholders to address challenges in the urgent and emergency care system that are difficult for single SRGs to address in isolation. This will include coordinating, integrating and overseeing care and setting shared objectives for the Network where there is clear advantage in achieving commonality for delivery of efficient patient care (e.g. ambulance protocols, NHS 111 services, clinical decision support and access protocols to specialist services such as those for heart attack, stroke, major trauma, vascular surgery and critically ill children).
Objectives for Networks will include:
a) Creating and agreeing an overarching, medium to long term plan to deliver the objectives of the Urgent and Emergency Care Review;
b) Designating urgent care facilities within the network, setting and monitoring standards, and defining consistent pathways of care and equitable access to diagnostics and services for both physical and mental health;
c) Making arrangements to ensure effective patient flow through the whole urgent care system (including access to specialist facilities and repatriation to local hospitals);
d) Maintaining oversight and enabling benchmarking of outcomes across the whole urgent care system, including primary, community, social, mental health and hospital services, the interfaces between these services and at network boundaries;
e) Achieving resilience and efficiency in the urgent care system through coordination, consistency and economies of scale (e.g. agreeing common pathways and services across SRG boundaries);
f) Coordinating workforce and training needs: establishing adequate workforce provision and sharing of resources across the network;
g) Ensuring the building of trust and collaboration throughout the network; spreading good and best practice and demonstrating positive impact and value, with a focus on relationships rather than structures.
