Reducing NHS patient stay from days to minutes

The scale of the NHS’s challenges in meeting demand for urgent and emergency care are well understood, and tackling them has been a major national priority.

NHS England set the ambition in its Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan to have a same day emergency care (SDEC) service in place in every hospital with a major emergency department, which it achieved last year.

University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB) has been leading the way in demonstrating the effectiveness of SDEC, combining services from different areas of the trust to see, diagnose, treat and discharge patients on the same day.

The SDEC at Royal Derby Hospital has been shortlisted for both an NHS Parliamentary Award and an HSJ Patient Safety Award for improving patient care and outcomes for urgent and emergency care and reducing pressures throughout the trust.

The benefits for patients is clear: they get seen quicker, in a calmer and more appropriate setting than the emergency department, and they are more frequently sent home the same day having received the care they need.

And for the trust there are fewer people needing beds overnight, and fewer people waiting in their emergency department, which means those do need to be seen there can get care quicker too. 

The SDEC at UHDB sees high volumes of patients – around 120 a day – with the vast majority (85 per cent) receiving the care they need and going home the same day. They’re also increasingly taking a significant burden off the emergency department, 61 per cent of emergency department patients were brought into care at SDEC within four hours last year, compared to 26 per cent previously. 

Now the trust is setting its sights on expanding to offer care to a wider range of patients.

Our video showcases the transformational change UHDB’s same day emergency care service is making.