All emergency departments should include GP staff, say experts

All hospital emergency departments in the United Kingdom should include a primary care out-of-hours facility to help ease the ongoing pressure on the system, experts have recommended.

The recommendation is one of 13 in a joint report from the College of Emergency Medicine, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of Physicians, and Royal College of Surgeons that outlines solutions for tackling major challenges, including rising activity levels, crowding, and patient flow in emergency departments and staffing levels.1

The report said that co-locating emergency departments with out-of-hours primary care would enable patients to be streamed more appropriately after triage and would foster more collaboration, such as sharing diagnostic facilities. Produced after a joint summit of the four organisations …