Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 18
18
Accepted
Interdependency of urgent and emergency care services creates system-wide bottlenecks from issues.
Conclusion
The different services for urgent and emergency care are highly connected and interdependent, meaning that issues in one service impacts throughout the rest of the system.46 If the NHS is unable to discharge patients from hospitals when they no longer need to be there it means that people waiting in accident and emergency departments (A&E) cannot be moved into wards, which in turn prevents ambulances from handing patients over to A&E and attending to new incidents.47 Maintaining the flow of patients throughout and between different urgent and emergency services is critical to ensuring that the system as a whole functions effectively.48
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the observation and outlines an additional £1.6 billion investment over 2023-25 for care services and measures within the Urgent and Emergency Care recovery plan aimed at tackling delayed discharges and improving patient flow.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 4.2 The Department of Health and Social Care is investing an additional £1.6 billion over 2023-24 and 2024-25, on top of the extra £500 million invested in 2022-23, to enable the NHS and local authorities to commission a greater range of services for people who need short-term packages of care and support for rehabilitation, reablement and recovery and to prevent avoidable delays to hospital discharge. 4.3 The Urgent and Emergency Care recovery plan, published in January 2023, sets out a wide programme of measures to tackle delayed discharges from hospital and community settings and improve outcomes for patients. In addition to increased discharge funding, this includes action to improve discharge processes; introduce care transfer hubs in all areas of the country to streamline and improve management of discharges for patients with more complex health and/or social care needs; improve models of rehabilitation and reablement; increase adult social care capacity; provide a more integrated approach to supporting improvements in discharge across health and social care; and improve the use of data and metrics to drive improvements in discharge.