The College of Emergency Medicine review of more than 3,000 patients found only 15% could have been treated in the community. Last year NHS England suggested 25% could – and used that to justify a major shake-up of A&E units. The difference amounts to 1.4m patients, the college said. The college is not opposed to NHS England’s proposed creation of a two-tier system involving major and minor units.
But it said the expectation that large numbers of visits to A&E could be saved was likely to be wrong, and it was important to take other steps to relieve pressures. One of these includes locating GPs in or alongside A&E units to filter out the less urgent cases – something which is already happening in a number of hospitals. Read the full story on the BBC website.