Commenting on the release today of NHS England’s winter plan, Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “We welcome the development of a winter plan as, at the very least, it acknowledges some of the issues and the need for action on a national scale.
“Urgent and emergency care is essential to the wider recovery and ongoing sustainability of the NHS and it is a step in the right direction to acknowledge this.
“However, we need to ensure that local hospital trusts recognise the crisis at the front door and provide adequate support to enable these aspirational plans to be put into practice.
“The problems we have seen and are currently seeing existed long before this winter and will exist long after, and workforce constraints will remain the largest barrier to the success of both short and long-term strategies.
“It also must be recognised that we cannot make up for a decade of decline in recruitment and capacity in these areas in a matter of months – but it is a start.”
SAM is the national representative body for the specialty of acute medicine, which deals with the immediate and early treatment of adult patients with a variety of medical conditions who present to hospital as emergencies.
The specialty receives the majority of patients admitted from A&E and helps maintain the flow of patients through emergency departments to avoid exit block, the term used when patients cannot be moved into a hospital bed.