Central Manchester - Urgent Care Programme
The urgent care programme was set up as Commissioners felt that there were opportunities to improve the urgent care system so that patients within Central Manchester received world class urgent care services. This programme is a partnership between NHS Manchester, Manchester City Council and Central Manchester Practice Based Commissioning Group.
Urgent Care is defined by the Department of Health as
"the range of responses that health and care providers provide to people who require or perceive the need for urgent care advice, care, treatment or diagnosis. People using services and carers should expect 24/7 consistent and rigorous assessment of the urgency of their care need and an appropriate and prompt response to that need."
In effect, people can expect an immediate assessment from a healthcare professional if they feel they have an urgent care need. A health professional can then make an assessment of that need, and put in place the appropriate care plan.
Our vision for urgent care is:
A system built around people and pathways rather than organisational or physical boundaries. Urgent Care should only be used if there is not a timely or clinically appropriate planned care response.
Our progress to date:
We have undertaken an analysis of the current system. This has involved patient surveys, interviews with healthcare professionals and service managers and analysis of financial and performance information. This has given a picture of the current system and its strengths and weaknesses.
We then developed a commissioning intent document which described a vision for urgent care services. This has now been developed into a system design document which details the future model of urgent care services. View the Urgent Care System Reform for Central Manchester - System Design PDF(2MB)
We are currently working on an implementation plan to move us towards this new system. This will be proposed as a Board Paper in December. The implementation is anticipated to take three years but there will new service models in place much sooner.