Urgent Care Consultation
What we did
An urgent situation is when advice or treatment are needed on the same day, but differs to an emergency situation which might be serious or life threatening.
We wanted to see how easy it is for people to find out where they need to go in an urgent situation and also, what's important to you when choosing urgent care services. While our survey included key considerations for urgent care commissioning, it was also quick, simple and relevant to a wide range of people.
Key highlights
- Concern over waiting times to get an appointment with the GP and the pressure this then places on other urgent care services. For example, respondents suggested they often went to A&E for urgent concerns because of a perception that this would be the quickest place to receive treatment. However, a number of respondents also reported waiting for a long time when attempting to receive care at other services such as walk-in clinics and A&E.
- A need to increases publicity of the range of urgent services such as NHS 111 and pharmacies through advertising and signposting in healthcare centres.
- Improving patient confidence in the quality of urgent care services. This could include staff training, sharing medical histories between different healthcare organisations and the availability of diagnostic equipment.
We received 71 responses in total and will discuss the results with local decision makers who can improve urgent care services. We also shared your feedback with the Pharmacy Needs Assessment team at Wandsworth Council and they plan to use it when making decisions about local urgent care services in future.
Downloads
Download our report, including our recommendations on urgent care services.
