Commenting on the publication of The College of Emergency Medicine’s report The drive for quality – How to achieve safe, sustainable care in our Emergency Departments, Dr Patrick Cadigan, registrar of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), said:
The RCP very much welcomes this report. Emergency care systems must be redesigned to better deliver high quality care for patients in a time of need, whilst ensuring clinicians’ workloads and working practices are safe and sustainable. The planning and implementation of system redesign must be clinically-led.
The RCP’s call for action, Hospitals on The Edge?, showed that patients are presenting at emergency departments because there is nowhere else they can go. Demand on the NHS is a whole system issue. It is important to look at how the ‘front door’ of the hospital is organised because this has an impact upon acute care services elsewhere in the hospital.
The RCP has been discussing with nurses, doctors, GPs and managers barriers to urgent and emergency care provision, how to manage demand in emergency departments and the collaborative solutions needed to meet this demand. These discussions will form part of the RCP’s response to Sir Bruce Keogh’s review of urgent and emergency care services.
Our Future Hospital Commission has been set up to review all aspects of the design and delivery of inpatient hospital care and is due to report shortly.