The South East has set up a programme board to ensure the region delivers the recommendations in NHS England’s Urgent and Emergency Care Review, which proposes a fundamental shift in the way urgent and emergency care services are provided.

The long-term vision is to create an urgent and emergency care system that is capable of delivering the right care, first time for the majority of patients through a networked model seven days a week, and which is easy for our patients to navigate and understand.

The Review proposes that five key changes are needed: ​

1. Providing better support for people to self-care
2. Helping people with urgent care needs to get the right advice in the right place, first time
3. Providing highly responsive urgent care services outside of hospital so people no longer choose to queue in A&E
4. Ensuring that those people with more serious or life threatening emergency needs receive treatment in centres with the right facilities and expertise in order to maximise chances of survival and a good recovery
5. Connecting all urgent and emergency care services together so the overall system becomes more than just the sum of its parts.