Survey of people waiting in Accident and Emergency at Northampton General Hospital, Kettering General Hospital and Corby Urgent Care Centre
We heard that most people were happy with how they had been dealt with by staff and received some very positive comments about the care shown. We also heard about a few specific poor experiences.
More than half the people we spoke to (303 people - 54%) had tried to get help from elsewhere first, and of those, most commonly people tried their GP practice first (193 people – 34%).
Whilst many people were referred to A&E by their GP practice for treatment or test (39 people told us this was the case), 35 people mentioned being unable to get a timely appointment at their GP practices as the reason they came to A&E/Urgent Care.
The report indicates that further work is needed to ensure that health services are working together to provide good access to alternatives to A&E and urgent care, if their condition is not an emergency, including increasing the number of emergency GP appointments, walk in centres and out of hours access. This should include looking at people’s pathways across the whole health system, from primary care and the 111 service and ambulance service, to hospital discharge and community support.
