Agenda item

Ed Waller, Chief Strategy and Partnerships Officer and Interim Chief Delivery Officer, ICB,was in attendance for this item.

1.    This paper provided an update on the review of Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) in Kent and Medway. The main aim of the review was to provide a consistent urgent treatment offering to reduce variation in access and outcomes, support the reduction of emergency department attendances for minor conditions and deliver effective services to drive value for money.

2.    UTCs were established to provide accessible services for treating non-life-threatening conditions, aiming to reduce pressure on A&E departments and ensure that patients received the most appropriate care.

3.    It was recognised that there was inconsistency in local service provision, with UTC services using diverse providers and offering different opening hours. National standards for UTC services included: being open 7 days a week for at least 12 hours a day; seeing both booked and walk-in patients; treating minor injuries and ailments, and; having a named senior clinical leader supported by a multi-disciplinary workforce. They also needed to have access to patient records, accept appropriate ambulance conveyance, and report daily on the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS).

4.    One of the areas that were being explored was whether some of the UTCs which were co -located next to emergency departments needed to increase their hours of operation in order to avoid people remaining in these departments unnecessarily through the night. This was now common practice around the country.

5.    The other area was the future of minor injuries units, and whether they should be provided with the same specifications as those in Urgent Treatment Centres, so that they would all are operate on a similar basis.

6.    In answer to a question about when this model would become operational, Mr Waller replied that, while some activities would be relatively easy to implement rapidly, others would require more time. The intention was to complete them in the course of 2026.

7.    In answer to a question about the integration of the GP out-of-hour services with UTCs, Mr Waller explained that there were some parts of the county where, in effect, patients were undergoing two lots of triage. It was the ICB’s view that the NHS did not have the resources for this, and for the patients it was frustrating to repeat the same process twice. Wherever possible, it was important to streamline mechanisms so that patients would undergo a single triage process to determine their needs.

8.    In reply to a question about the need to refresh some of the UTCs’ infrastructure, Mr Waller acknowledged that, while there were some high-quality facilities in Kent and Medway, there were others which needed replacing or improving. The main constraint was the limited amount of capital funding available to the NHS in order to do so. There was a very large national backlog on capital maintenance and replacement, and in Kent and Medway this was greater than the national average.

9.    It was crucial to consider how best to invest to make sure that facilities were in the right place to deliver the clinical services that the population needed. There had to be close collaboration between organizations that were not co-located to enable this vision.

RESOLVED that the Committee note the report.