FINANCE: Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group has approved new funds to put GPs in two local hospitals in an attempt to alleviate pressure on accident and emergency services.
In total, £1.3m in extra funding is being invested to try to ensure A&E departments are not clogged up with patients who do not need to be admitted.
The idea behind the schemes at Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Foundation Trust is to triage patients presenting at A&E and redirect some to the in house GP.
The CCG has set aside £165,488 on a recurrent basis to pay for a dedicated GP to work within Royal Liverpool Hospital.
The funding puts on a permanent basis a pilot which between November 2013 and July 2014 diverted 2,632 patients from the hospital’s A&E department.
In addition to the Royal Liverpool scheme, £646,352 has been allocated to pilot for 16 months the placement of GPs within Alder Hey’s Children Hospital’s emergency department.
Liverpool CCG believes the initiative has the potential to siphon 6,000 patients away from Alder Hey’s A&E service.
The CCG has also allocated £447,039 to continue an initiative with the North West Ambulance Service, which provides alternatives to ambulance conveyance for callers who do not need to be transferred to hospital.
Source
Source date
October 2014
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