Overall, results from this survey show people are having poor experiences of urgent and emergency care services. This applies more so for people using A&E services, with UTC patients generally reporting more positively.
Patients with long waits to initial assessment and those whose visits lasted more than 4 hours consistently report poorer care experiences for both A&E and urgent care services. Sixty-four percent of A&E respondents said their visit lasted more than 4 hours, with patients whose visit lasted more than 4 hours reporting worse than average experiences for all areas of care included in our analysis. Similarly, A&E patients who waited more than 60 minutes for their initial assessment (triage) also reported poorer experiences in the same areas. People’s experiences of waiting for care whilst at A&E were especially poor, with 47% of A&E patients not able to get help with their conditions or symptoms. Of those who needed help with medication for a pre-existing medical condition in A&E, over a quarter (28%) were not helped by staff.
In addition, for the first time, this survey asks why respondents attended urgent and emergency care, rather than opting to receive care from another service. Results show that a lack of timely access to other services may be contributing to unnecessary attendances at urgent and emergency care services.
Visit Care Quality Commission to read the full report Return to the Insight Bank