Following the recent launch of our trust strategy,  here is a little more information about one of the main supporting strategies – the Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Strategy.

As the only provider organisation that covers the whole region 365 days of the year, 24/7, we have a central role to play in the development and improvement of urgent and emergency care services across the North West.

The importance of this is outlined in the recently published NHS Long Term plan which describes how the NHS will move to a new service model in which patients get better support and properly joined-up care at the right time in the right care setting.

This will require collaboration between NWAS and other healthcare services to make the most of opportunities to treat more patients by telephone, at scene and in community settings, reducing unnecessary journeys to hospital – a better outcome for patients and the whole of the NHS system.

The UEC strategy is a supporting five-year strategy dedicated to urgent and emergency care integration has been developed within NWAS. The delivery of this is led by a transformation team which will drive progress across four areas of focus (known as work-streams). These are:

• Service delivery: Looking at our current service delivery model and whether there are any enhancements that could put us in a better position to be part of a wider integrated urgent and emergency care system.
• Integrated response model: Looking at how we integrate better as 111, 999 and PTS services within NWAS to improve patient experience.
• Rotational working: Looking at how we can embrace different professions and ways of working, while supporting all staff to adapt, enable multi-professional working and develop flexible careers for the future. This includes working with external partner organisations to explore options for our highly-skilled clinical staff to rotate into different working environments.
• Clinical programmes: Ensuring everything we do has clinical support and input, and is the right thing to do clinically for our patients. This work-stream also includes see and treat development and health promotion and prevention through understanding our population.

The UEC strategy in full and a ‘plan on a page’ version are available to download and view.

If you have any questions about the Urgent and Emergency Care Strategy, please email transformation@nwas.nhs.uk