> Do any departments have any robust triage or other protocols
> than I can look at regarding Primary Care attedances to A&E.
Coventry do. Available on NELH-EC somewhere. Trouble with working out robust
triage protocols is that you tend to overtriage. May be more useful to allow
your triage nurse to use their common sense. The other thing that does help
is when you do see patients with primary care problems, advise them to
contact their GP rather than treating them in A and E. Takes a bit longer,
but the word gets around and keeps your 'primary care' attendances down.
(And if patients say they can't get an appointment, try ringing the GP
yourself- surprising how easy it often is to get an appointment).
> What we are just about to launch here is a system where we
> have access to GP
> appointment slots available over the next few days' at the
> patient's GP
> practice. As they have a 10 minutes per patient, the first
> hour in a day is
> taken up by patients coming from A&E (innapropriate
> attendenders (what you
> think) or primary care patients (what you write)). That is 6
> patients from
> A&E per GP which actually amounts to a lot of slots when
> multiplied by the
> number of GPs.
>
That comes to an enormous number of slots: for a smallish A and E serving
250,000 population it comes to around 150,000 patients a year. But its a
nice way of being sure that patients can get appointments. Sounds like
you've been doing a bit of sensible joined up work there. Mind you, its also
about 25,000 GP hours a year, which at a conservative £20 an hour (and GP
locums rarely charge less than £50) comes to a fair whack of money compared
to seeing these patients in A and E.
Matt Dunn
Warwick
This email has been scanned for viruses by NAI AVD however we are unable to
accept responsibility for any damage caused by the contents.
The opinions expressed in this email represent the views of the sender, not
South Warwickshire General Hospitals NHS Trust unless explicitly stated.
If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender.
|