Consultant triage cuts emergency admissions by a third, report finds

Hospitals in England admitted 305 500 emergency general surgery patients last year who did not then have an operation, finds a new report, which says that if consultant surgeons triaged at the “front door” they would reduce these admissions by a third and save the NHS £108m (€120m; $140m) a year.1

The report, from the Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) programme, which compares trusts’ data on everything from effective procedures, length of stay in hospital, and infection rates to procurement costs, highlights a series of variations in the way general surgery is carried out across 50 trusts and identifies potential improvements in care and savings of over £160m to be made if all trusts followed the …