NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) and Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) teams are rolling out two new online improvement tools to help ease local pressures on hospital emergency departments.
The Alternatives to ED (A-tED) tool offers a scoring system to measure, rate and compare the accessibility, availability and opening hours of any services patients might use in their area as an alternative to attending the ED (eg; walk-in centres, telephone advice services, urgent ‘hot’ clinics and community services).
Together with a sister tool – Alternatives to Admission (A-tA) – they can support ICSs to enhance capacity in their EDs and admissions wards, improving staff and patient satisfaction by reducing the pressures caused by overcrowding.
More than 20 early adopters of the system have given positive feedback, and the tools are now being rolled out nationally. Contact england.a-ted@nhs.net for more information.