First eight urgent and emergency care vanguards revealed

It comes as part of the commissioning body’s new care models programme, as set out in the Five Year Forward View.

The eight new vanguard sites are:

• South Nottingham System Resilience Group – a partnership of local organisations, including Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, South Nottingham and Erewash clinical commissioning groups, Nottingham City and County councils, and East Midlands Ambulance Service.
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG.
• North East Urgent Care Network.
• Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge System Resilience Group.
• West Yorkshire Urgent Emergency Care Network.
• Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland System Resilience Group.
• Solihull Together for Better Lives – comprises Heart of England Foundation Trust, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health FT, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Solihull CCG, primary care and lay members.
• South Devon and Torbay System Resilience Group – led by South Devon and Torbay CCG, South Devon Healthcare FT, and Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care Trust.

The sites will get access to funding from NHS England’s £200m transformation fund in 2015-16.

NHS England next intends to establish 23 urgent and emergency care networks across England, each covering populations between 1 million and 5 million, to set and monitor standards of care and “designate urgent care facilities”.

The vanguards follow the “regional major trauma networks” set up three years ago, which resulted in a 50 per cent increase in the chance of survival for trauma patients, according to an audit by the Trauma Audit and Research Network.

NHS England’s director for acute episodes of care, Professor Keith Willett, said: “This proves a modern NHS needs a very different approach and shows, even in times of austerity, we can transform patient care. We cannot delay in now securing that same advantage for the thousands of other patients.”

He said it was “equally important” that the new networks “support and improve all our local urgent and emergency care services”, such as accident and emergency departments, urgent care centres, GPs, NHS 111 and community, social care and ambulance services, “so no one is working isolated from expert advice 24 hours a day”.

Professor Willett added: “The solution does not lie in simply providing more and more money to emergency departments.  It’s clear that we need to deliver a step change in the way that health services in this country are used and delivered.”