Until now urgent and emergency care has been fragmented and disconnected as patients often don’t know where they should go when they have an urgent care need that is not life threatening. This has led to inconsistencies in the responses and treatment patients receive for various reasons. These include: preventing easy cross referral, the need to re-triage at each step using different clinical assessment tools, patients being referred to services that do not have the skills they require or patients simply not knowing where and how they can access urgent care and as a result dial 999.
NHS Pathways sets out to deliver a single clinical assessment tool that provides effective triage over the telephone in any setting taking calls from the public. This can include 999, NHS Direct, GP out-of-hours, NHS 111 and any other Single Point of Access number in place. This will ensure every patient accessing urgent and emergency care services is effectively triaged, reducing the need for them to repeat information and helping to make sure that they are directed to the right care at the right time.
What is it and how does it work? NHS Pathways is a suite of clinical assessment content for triaging telephone calls from the public, based on the symptoms they report when they call.
NHS Pathways enables a specially designed clinical assessment to be carried out by the trained person answering the call. Once the clinical assessment has been completed, a clinical skill set and a defined timescale will be identified for the patient.
At the end of the assessment, if an emergency ambulance is not required, an automatic search is carried out on the integrated Directory of Services to locate an appropriate service in the patient’s local area that offers the specific clinical skills needed within the time frame required.
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