What you’re telling us

Listening to your views on urgent treatment

Throughout January 2019, we asked for people’s opinions and their preferences about how they access urgent care.  Urgent care is the range of health services available to people who need urgent advice, diagnosis and treatment for needs that are not considered life threatening.  They are separate from Accident and Emergency (A&E) services which provide emergency care.

In line with national NHS guidance, we are developing an Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), which is located at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department at Scunthorpe General Hospital.

This is an additional, GP-led service for those that have a genuine emergency need. The two co-located services will mean that anyone attending the hospital without an emergency need will be seen by the UTC which will act as a ‘new front door’ to the hospital. The patient’s own GP practice should still be their first point of contact for non-emergency needs.

How we have engaged with people

There were 1057 people who responded to our survey in January 2019.  Some of these completed the questionnaire online; others sent their questionnaire through the post to us.  You can view the questionnaire here.

We wanted to make sure we included the views of those who might not normally engage with us, but also those most likely to use urgent care services.  Throughout January we went out to speak to people face to face to complete the questionnaire and have group discussions.  We spoke to:

  • Older people
  • Young people – including the North Lincolnshire Youth Council
  • Homeless – by visiting The Forge homeless project
  • Parents of young children at children’s centres across North Lincolnshire
  • The working population – through a drop in session for employees at British Steel
  • Those mental health needs through discussions with a peer support group
  • Carers – at the Carers Advisory Partnership
  • A local mosque
  • Patients in GP practice waiting areas
  • Patients waiting in A&E

We also held discussions about urgent care with the North Lincolnshire Patient Participation Group (PPG) Chairs Forum, a number of PPG meetings and our CCG Patient and Community Assurance Group.

What we are doing next

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to share their views on urgent care with us.

The CCG has now published its report on the findings of the urgent care survey. You can download and read the full report here.

This report was discussed at a North Lincolnshire CCG Council of Members meeting on 23rd May 2019, as part of discussions about how the new urgent treatment centre would develop.

We will shortly produce a ‘You Said We Did’ document so that you can easily see how people’s views have been taken into account and contributed to the new service.