Thousands more people across the North West will benefit from faster care at home thanks to the boosted rollout of healthcare teams in the community, as part of the NHS plan to recover urgent and emergency care services.

Almost 28,000 people across the North West have received urgent care at home – many avoiding a hospital stay – since the teams were rolled out across the region in April 2022 – two years ahead of the NHS Long Term Plan target.

Thanks to this major new plan to help recover services and reduce waiting times for patients, these community services will be scaled up even further taking more referrals from ambulance services seven days a week across England.

Around one fifth of emergency admissions can be avoided with the right care in place and NHS staff will increase the number of referrals from ambulance services in the coming months.

The community teams respond to less clinically urgent 999 calls within two hours and support patients who have had falls, need urgent diabetes support, or are suffering from confusion.

The NHS nationally is already exceeding the standard for these services with 70% of patients with urgent needs seen within two hours since the launch.

Keeping people out of hospital and in their own homes, where they prefer to be, will play a key role in helping ease pressure on NHS services and is a key part of the urgent and emergency care recovery plan.

The two-year delivery plan aims to improve patient experience, as the health service continues to face record demand for services.

Those eligible to use the service are those aged 18 or over, at risk of hospital attendance or admission, but who will be safe to wait a maximum of two hours for assessment and are safe to be treated in their home or a community setting.

Once referred to the service a patient will receive a short triage assessment, and if suitable, a member of the team will be with them within two hours.

Sheena Hennell, UEC Senior Transformation Programme Manager for the North West Region said: “The aim of the service is to avoid unnecessary visits to Emergency Departments, benefitting individuals by keeping people at home reducing both stress, and disruption.”

The latest data shows the number of people treated by UCR teams nationally each month has doubled since the national roll-out in April, from 17,500 to 35,000 in December.

In Warrington, they have been working with the pendant alarm service TEC Services Association on a system that enables call handlers to select the UCR service as an alternative to calling 999, and have also joined up with the local falls response service, which means they can send a UCR clinician with the falls team to patients who may need additional assessment, and are also able to refer patients to other services, such as falls prevention and community nursing services.

The Warrington UCR service sees about 20 patients each day, with the majority (80%) remaining in their own homes. Pendant alarm calls account for a quarter of calls to the service.

James Sanderson, NHS England director for community health services, said: “Urgent Community Response teams are an invaluable resource for the NHS – they are key in helping patients to receive the care they need, in the right place and at the right time.

“Thanks to the huge efforts of staff from different sectors working together across the country, more people than ever are getting the care they need and avoiding the need to go to hospital at all.

“This is both better for people who want to stay well in their own homes as well as the NHS, as we continue to tackle the pressures of Covid and recover our elective and urgent and emergency care services.”