M BAIN (HAS, Feb 15) asks good questions about our health service provision.
Our A&Es are extremely busy, but more of them is not the answer. A&E departments are meant for people with serious or life threatening illnesses and injuries. Many of the people attending do not need hospital treatment, and could be treated in an urgent care centre or minor injuries unit, a GP practice or could self-care. We need to provide better information and education about services and encourage people to change their behaviour.
When patients do need A&E, we need to make sure they get to see the right staff quickly. In the past, most hospitals could provide the best care available. Advances in medicine and increasing specialisation mean that this is no longer true.
In serious emergencies patients should be taken to a hospital where experienced teams see high numbers of patients with similar problems 24/7. When they are ready to leave hospital, experience shows that patients recover better in their own homes, where possible, and this helps them maintain independence. There are already schemes in place to do this, but we need to do much more, working with social care and other organisations, including the care home sector, to get patients discharged more quickly and relieve pressure on hospitals.
Dr Stewart Findlay, Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group.
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