Helen Salisbury: GPs aren’t to blame for delays in emergency departments

If you’ve been reading the popular press, you’ll have been told that the problem of long waits in emergency departments (EDs) is partly caused by snowflake patients (who don’t know how to look after themselves when they have a sore throat) but is mostly the fault of lazy GPs who can’t be bothered to offer them an appointment, leaving them with no choice but to attend to their nearest ED.However, a study by NHS England, recently reported in the Health Service Journal, shows that this just isn’t true.1 The study was devised to pilot a new way of categorising the urgency (“acuity”) of each case presenting to an ED, which was partly in response to tragic deaths of patients who had waited long hours for medical attention after inadequate triage.23 The study sorted patients into five groups, ranging from life threatening emergencies right down to low acuity patients who could…
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