Responding to the UK Government’s proposals regarding extending primary care services in England to alleviate pressures in A&E, Prof Derek Bell, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, said:
“The announcement over the weekend regarding extending primary care to alleviate pressures in unscheduled care in England oversimplifies a complex problem.
"The winter pressures we face this year are predictable based on the data from the last five years; the pattern of attendance at Emergency departments can be forecast with reasonable accuracy on a daily and weekly basis.
“The pressures largely relate to patients who require hospital care and, hence, admission and by definition have more complex needs and a more complex patient journey. This journey - which can span days, weeks or months - routinely requires input from multiple health professionals and often from multiple agencies.
“Attempts to over simplify these processes or apportion blame to a professional group - this weekend GPs - or a care environment will never resolve the problems. We have to optimise each stage of the patient journey and in this regard the four-hour A&E target is not simply a target for A&E but for the whole system. Labelling it ‘A&E’ merely compounds the problem.
“Many of the solutions to this are already known but will require support to enact and, importantly, this will require dialogue between government and those delivering care and the creation of a supportive environment.
"If we adopt a blame approach we endanger the future of the NHS through potentially lack of good planning and failure to retain high quality professional staff to deliver the best quality care safely.”
Contact: Lisa Rooke - 0131 247 3688 / 07717 895628 / l.rooke@rcpe.ac.uk
