ED Deflection Scheme

Emergency Department (ED) Deflection Scheme

We would encourage all GP practices across Stockport to become involved in the ED Deflection Scheme.  The concept is that if a patient turns up at ED between the hours of 9am and 3pm, who could be treated in General Practice then ED will telephone the patient’s GP Practice and the practice will then offer that patient an appointment within 2 hours or make arrangements for an initial telephone consultation. To this end all practices have provided a contact telephone number for ED to contact them on.

The following information is the protocol that was included in the CCG launch pack given out at the CCG launch event in April:

Patient Deflection From ED to GP Practices

Aim:

To deflect patients from ED and manage patients in Primary Care.

To provide Responsive capacity in GP practices to accommodate primary care same day demand currently presenting (inappropriately) in the Emergency Department at Stepping Hill.

A number should be identified and a pathway established to manage calls from the ED department for this group of patients.

Clinical availability:

1. Direct telephone access for urgent care colleagues, particularly A&E and Ambulance Service (NWAS) colleagues, to manage patient expectations and support deflection. This shall not a public telephone number
2. To make contact with patients who are deflected from ED within two-three hours this might be a phone triage call, an appointment, home visit or practice nurse visit.  This will be available between 9:00am and 3.00pm to allow time for the practice to make contact with the patient and allow the patient time to access the practice if that is the agreed outcome. It is anticipated that in a large practice this is one or two patients a week.

Delivery Requirements

1.   Patient Education and Promotion of Access to Practice:

• Improving perception of access to Practice by offering other alternatives Changing continuing perception of lack of availability and difficulty in accessing general practice at time of need

2.   Quick telephone access to practice for health/social care professional use in urgent care.  It is could be a mobile number:

• Enables access to the patient’s general practice in an urgent situation only. Use will be restricted to urgent care services i.e. ambulance, A&E etc. A brief conversation with the GP often enables improved decision making by other services who do not know the patient’s medical and social circumstances
• Cheap mobile phone with pay-as-you-go SIM delivers this at next to no cost.

Measures:

• The number of patients referred by ED to the practice.
• The number of patients that require face to face contact.