Nursing Management. 19, 9, 8-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.7748/nm2013.01.19.9.8.p10322
Published in print: 28 January 2013
An increasing number of NHS acute trusts are offering same-day emergency care that allows patients to return home without needing to stay overnight.
The streamlined service provides rapid assessment, diagnosis and treatment for patients in a few hours and helps ease the pressure on overstretched emergency departments (EDs).
This type of service, called ambulatory emergency care (AEC), will be supported in a third wave of hospitals by the AEC Delivery Network from April. The network, which until December was hosted by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, has to date worked with 22 trusts to develop such services.
Network programme director Deborah Thompson says that setting up an AEC unit involves collaborative working between a hospital trust, local commissioners and other service providers, such as GPs and community nurses. Referrals to AEC will often be taken directly from GPs, the ED and other areas of the hospital.
The NHS Institute has a list of recommended episodes of care that may be suitable for AEC services, and in April last year the Department of Health introduced payment tariffs for 12 emergency clinical scenarios for patients receiving same-day care, including acute headache, asthma, chest pain, pulmonary embolism and self-harm. There are plans to extend the list every year.
Patients may visit an AEC centre once or over a number of days as, for example, in the case of those needing a course of intravenous antibiotics.
Ms Thompson says: ‘What we are trying to do is replicate the day surgery model. Once the model was right, it evolved rapidly across the NHS and is now often considered as the first option.
Read More: http://journals.rcni.com/doi/full/10.7748/nm2013.01.19.9.8.p10322