As reported by NHS England, a dramatic expansion in same-day emergency care across the NHS has seen a significant reduction in unnecessary overnight hospitalisations, offering faster, efficient care and liberating vital bed space
New data shows there has been an 11% increase in number of people who were admitted to hospital as an emergency complete their care and be discharged on the same day, meaning hundreds of thousands more patients received the urgent care they needed in a matter of hours, freeing up wards beds for others who needed them.
In the past 12 months, there were 206,446 more patients discharged on the same day having received the care that they needed, rather than having to stay overnight in hospital (from 1,817,683 in the year to January 2023 to 2,024,129 in the year to January 2024).
The NHS has met the Urgent and emergency recovery plan ambition to roll out same day emergency care to every hospital in England, helping to free up beds and keep people out of hospital by as much as 30% in some NHS Trusts.
Running 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the units help staff to assess, diagnose and treat hundreds of thousands of patients a year as well as supporting patients to go home after receiving the care that they need.
This winter, more than 1.7 million people were taken to hospitals by ambulance (since the week ending 26 November) – 260,000 more than the same comparable period a year ago – and NHS 111 answered 7.2 million calls, hundreds of thousands more than last winter.
A&E departments are managing record levels of demand with an average of 74,219 attendances per day in February 2024 – the busiest February on record. Despite this, a greater proportion of attendances completed their A&E treatment in less than four hours (70.9%) than in the month previous (70.3%).
The addition of these services helps NHS organisations free up beds, reduce the risk of infection, and can help boost patient recovery, alongside contributing to financial savings both for the NHS and patients.
Same day emergency care includes medical, surgical or specialist treatment, such as paediatrics and gynaecology.
Sarah-Jane Marsh, National Director of Urgent and Emergency Care, said: “The expansion of same day emergency care services across the country is ensuring patients with a wide variety of conditions can access timely diagnosis, care and treatment, without admitting them to an inpatient bed – supporting better outcomes, experience and waiting times.
“By continuing to deliver on our urgent and emergency care recovery plan, despite the pressures of another challenging winter and the impact of industrial action, a further fall in ambulance response times, as well as the number of patients waiting for treatment is a testament to the continued hard work and dedication of NHS teams, who go above and beyond every day to deliver improvements for patients within the available resources.”
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