Need to go to A&E? ‘See your GP first’
NHS patients could be turned away from hospital casualty departments unless they have seen their family doctor first.
Even urgent cases would only be treated if they had already contacted the health hotline NHS 111.
Health chiefs are said to be considering the radical plans to stop walk-in patients with minor problems clogging emergency departments.
Dr Helen Thomas, national medical adviser at NHS England, said the organisation is considering piloting the “talk before you walk” idea. Only patients brought in by ambulance would be seen without referral.
Dr Thomas told Pulse magazine that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had raised the idea.
She added: “I think it’s been done in other countries.”
Speaking at the Urgent Health UK conference, she said that out of 100 patients who come to A&E “only 20 have called 111”.
Dr Thomas said that the discussions of a pilot are in the early stages and admitted it would be “tricky” to implement the plan. But Dr Simon Abrams, chair of Urgent Health UK said that while the pilot will “inevitably” put more pressure on other services, it was an “interesting proposal”.
He said: “It might reduce the workloads of A&E departments, which on the whole are staffed by very junior doctors and if you can put a slightly more senior doctor over the telephone to that patient, maybe you can provide better care.”
Dr Abrams added however that it “needs a lot of thinking through” and might not be “acceptable either to a political party or to patients”.
Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, asked: “Will the parent of a child who has fallen and broken their arm, for instance, really have to call 111 or get a GP referral first?
“Will there be bouncers on the door, turning people away?”
And Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association, said: “Trying to solve a problem in one part of the NHS by shifting it on to another won’t work.
“Pressure on emergency departments is down to seriously ill patients and a lack of capacity and funding across the whole system. “All this proposed system would do is add an extra layer of bureaucracy for patients and an extra burden on the NHS, GPs, or other clinicians.
“It could also have the added effect of increasing the burden on the ambulance service as people could instead just call an ambulance to get a place in A&E.”
Professor Helen StokesLampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said the plan would increase red tape “for a profession already drowning in it”.
NHS England yesterday said: “It is wrong to suggest or imply that the NHS will do anything other than continue to provide A&E care for all patients who need it.”
Last month, the head of the NHS warned that hospitals should be braced for a “pressurised” flu season this winter adding to strain on A&E departments.
But a Department of Health spokesman said there were no current plans to pilot “talk before you walk”.
He added: “Unprecedented planning has gone in to preparing the NHS for this winter, supported by an extra £100million for A&E departments and £2billion for the social care system.”