Policy Hub
On 5 December 2006, the Department of Health published two reports (Mending hearts and brains: clinical case for change: report by Professor Roger Boyle, National Director for heart disease and stroke; and Emergency access: clinical case for change: report by Sir George Alberti, the National Director for emergency access). The reports argue that traditional A&E departments are not the only option when dealing with life and death situations. Some A&E departments are not able to provide the degree of specialist services that modern medicine dictates and the public deserves. Every service cannot be offered by every A&E department, so it makes sense to create networks of care with regional specialist centres to give the best possible treatment to the sickest people. For the majority of people, care is still going to be as local as it ever was. Major emergencies affect a relatively small number of people.
The NHS in the future will save more peoples lives by taking the most seriously ill patients to the right specialist centre. But it will also give many people, with less serious conditions, more convenient care by taking A&E to the patient rather than expecting every patient who wants urgent care to go to A&E
Giving life-saving drugs to heart attack victims on their doorstep and using clinical judgements to by-pass A&E to deliver heart attack and stroke patients directly to specialists, is acting only in the best interest of the patient. A further 1000 stroke victims a year would regain independence, rather than die or be left dependent on others, if they were given clot-busting treatment in specialist centres.
The reports can be viewed on the DH website:
Mending hearts and brains: clinical case for change: report by Professor
Roger Boyle,
National Director for heart disease and stroke
Emergency access: clinical case for change: report by Sir George Alberti,
the National Director for emergency access