Designing emergency and urgent care services around users

Published: 5-Sep-2022

New programme launched to understand users’ views on NHS emergency and urgent care services

NHS England, along with a consortium of partners, is inviting people from across England to give feedback on their recent experiences of using urgent and emergency care (UEC) services.

The survey, which is live now, asks people about their experiences to help better understand what they have accessed, why, and what their experience was like.

It will be live for six weeks, with the results set to be published later this year.

The comments will be collated by healthcare ai specialist, PEP Health.

Urgent and emergency care (UEC) services perform a critical role in keeping the population healthy, with the NHS responding to more than 110 million urgent and emergency calls or visits every year; so it is essential that the system works effectively.

Anyone who has accessed any type of urgent and emergency care over the last four years is invited to take part. However, the survey is particularly interested in anyone who may have used these services over the last three months.

Services will include 999 emergency services, A&E departments, NHS 111 online, NHS 111 telephone service, and urgent treatment centres.

The information will give health bosses a more-comprehensive overview of patient experiences in England.

Dr Mark Lomax from PEP Health, said. “This is a really great opportunity for us to hear first hand from patients about their experiences to help us gain a better understanding of how things have changed in the last four years. And, importantly, what can be done to improve it.

“We want to gain as much information and as many views as we can and as wide a range as possible in terms their interactions with the system.

“It’s a great chance for them to have their say so we can look at how we can make healthcare work better for local people and across the country.”

The research programme is being supported by a consortium of five UK-based organisations including Eastern Academic Health Science Network, PEP Health, Patient Experience Library (PEL), Ethnic Opinions, and Traverse.

As well as the questionnaire, patient feedback is also being collated from a variety of places such as focus groups and analysing comments made on social media platforms.

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