Emergency admission to hospital is a major event in people’s lives.
It should never happen because it is easy to admit or to access services that could be available as an out-patient or to administer treatment that may be available closer to home or to get a specialist opinion. All of these are spurious reasons for an emergency admission. To transform emergency healthcare we need to understand why we put patients through this process
when alternatives exist and operate effectively across the country but haven’t been widely implemented. Emergency admission implies a patient is sick and requires a high level of intervention. As such, all proposed emergency admissions should prompt a clinical conversation between senior doctors, ideally consultants.
The clinical conversation should occur at the point of referral. The person requesting admission from ED, primary care or elsewhere, should be able to have immediate access to the specialist team to discuss the patient.
Rapid-Improvement-Guide-to-the-6-As-of-Managing-Emergency-Admissions---F.