The Integrated Urgent Care Service Specification outlines the steps that commissioners must take to deliver a consistent service across the country, moving from an ‘assess to refer’ to a new ‘consult and complete’ model of service delivery.

Next steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View

The Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View outlined the importance of developing NHS 111 services to help reduce the pressure on emergency hospital services by creating more joined-up, out-of-hospital care.

Since this publication, NHS England has worked collaboratively with clinicians, commissioners and urgent care providers to develop a national service specification for the provision of a 24/7 integrated urgent care service accessed through NHS 111.

Delivery targets

Commissioners are responsible for monitoring their IUC service performance against agreed metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).

The revised Integrated Urgent Care KPIs and Quality Standards document aims to improve understanding of how the urgent care system is performing overall, as well as driving up performance to ensure patients receive the best possible outcomes.

The document has been developed in collaboration with significant stakeholders and details the following:

• processes by which data will be collected, including timing and financial implications;
• broad next steps needed to start producing data;
• specification, sources and accompanying issues for the new KPIs that are designed to show whether the service is being delivered successfully;
• full data that will be collected regularly by NHS England, including the KPIs;
• how the KPIs supersede existing measure;
• recommendations for further data items that will assist with monitoring of the service.

Reporting and data for the IUC service can be found here on the NHS England and Improvement website.