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       #Post#: 105--------------------------------------------------
       Increase in A&E attendances reason
       By: admini5 Date: May 12, 2015, 3:45 am
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       Is the increase in A&E attendances mainly a result of people
       going to A&E when they should go somewhere else?
       Nearly 40 per cent of patients who attend A&E are discharged
       without requiring treatment. This does not mean that all these
       patients are attending A&E unnecessarily or could be cared for
       elsewhere. Estimates vary but a survey of 3,000 patients in 12
       A&E units conducted for the College of Emergency Medicine found
       that 15 per cent of patients could have been treated in the
       community; again this is not to say that they all went to A&E
       'inappropriately'. Two of the claims put forward for why people
       got to A&E are examined below.
       Lack of access to GP appointments
       It has been suggested that more patients are attending A&E
       because they are unable to get appointments with their GP.
       However, it is difficult to pin down accurately how many people
       that might be. We do not know if there has been a very recent
       deterioration in access to GPs that has led to a growth in A&E
       attendances. The latest results from the GP Patient Survey show
       that 85.4 per cent of patients were able to get a convenient
       appointment, slightly worse than in the previous year, and of
       those patients who couldn’t get a convenient appointment, 9.8
       per cent of those people reported going to A&E or to a walk-in
       centre instead.
       Lack of access to out-of-hours care
       The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, suggested that
       changes to the GP contract in 2004 led to increases in A&E
       attendance by removing responsibility for out-of-hours care from
       GPs. However, there is no evidence that changes to the
       arrangements for providing out-of-hours services have led to an
       increase in A&E attendances.
       Most people go to A&E during working hours and these hourly
       patterns in attendances have remained largely unchanged in
       recent years. However, patients are clearly uncertain about how
       to access out-of-hours care – the most recent GP survey also
       found that only 55.4 per cent of patients said they knew whom to
       contact out of hours (which is worse than in previous years).
       Access to other types of care out of hours (for example,
       district nursing care) is also important in keeping people out
       of hospital. We know that the number of district nurses has
       decreased by about 30 per cent in the past five years.
       For further information:
  HTML http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/urgent-emergency-care/urgent-and-emergency-care-mythbusters
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