Care ‘traffic control’ centres to speed up discharge, extended ambulance hours and extra beds are part of wide-ranging plans to prepare for winter across the South East.

The robust new measures, announced today by the NHS, will boost capacity and resilience across the region as well as building on the recent improvements in ambulance response times and A&E performance.  

Winter preparations have been well underway since the publication of the NHS’s Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan, with over 800 new ambulances nationally set to be in place to deliver 3.4 million more ambulance road hours as well as 5,000 more sustainable hospital beds and hundreds of new virtual wards each month.

The South East has made significant progress in reducing handover delays seeing a decrease of 18% on this time last year to 9% (over 30 minutes). This means there are more ambulances on the road available and able to respond to 999 calls.

Improvements are also being seen across the region in same day emergency care. For example, 89% of referrals for people to be seen in their own home within two hours are being met, which is 19% above the minimum expectation. Furthermore, 4-hour published A&E performance is 2% higher than June 2022. At 78% in June 2023, the South East is 8% higher than the average in England and has met the minimum expectation of 76% for 4-hour performance.

Vaughan Lewis, Regional Medical Director for NHS South East, said: “Preparing for winter can never be done too early and is vital in ensuring the NHS in the South East can deliver timely, high quality services for patients.

“There have been many lessons learnt from previous winters and this year’s planning will set us in good stead for the winter ahead. We’ve seen significant and unprecedented pressures in recent years which have taught us to be prepared for the unknowns. These robust new measures will help support the NHS in the South East to boost capacity and resilience across the region, and to continue to build on recent improvements in ambulance response times and A&E performance.”

NHS Providers across the region have already established a range of interventions as part of the Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan to meet the potential challenges and needs of their population. In the region, virtual wards are a key component of Urgent and Emergency Care planning and since launching in May 2022, nearly 50,000 patients have been admitted onto a Virtual Ward in the South East.

Earlier this month, the NHS announced its world-leading virtual ward programme would be expanding to children, with overall virtual wards bed numbers expected to hit our ambition of 10,000 by the end of September.

With more than 12,000 patients every day in hospital despite being medically fit for discharge, a nationwide rollout of ‘care traffic control’ centres will provide one stop for staff to locate and co-ordinate the best and quickest discharge options for patients – either at home or into social or community care.

The centres will bring together teams from across NHS, social care, housing, and voluntary services in one place to help make live decisions and offer patients everything they need in one place.

Across Sussex, discharge lounges are being introduced to speed up access to care in hospitals. The new services at Eastbourne District General Hospital provide dedicated space with additional beds and chairs for patients that have received treatment and are awaiting discharge.

Since £250million of funding was announced in January to boost capacity and speed up discharge, NHS providers in the South East have been allocated £16m to provide an additional 1,000 beds needed to help shorten waiting times, improving patient experience’s this winter.

In Portsmouth, Hampshire, an NHS Urgent Community Response Team provides a multi-skilled team to patients in their usual place of residence with an urgent care need, preventing a hospital admission. The team are able to conduct an and involves an assessment within 2-hours of referral and provide a short-term intervention.