REDUCING the number of emergency admissions to hospitals is one of the key challenges facing the NHS. Accident and emergency departments across the country are seeing an increase in the number of patients coming through the doors, which is putting the emergency departments under great pressure.

Commissioning high-quality and accessible urgent care health services is an important priority for NHS South Worcestershire Clinical Commissioning Group.

We’ve been working closely with all local NHS organisations, health and social care and voluntary sector leaders to reduce pressure on our emergency services through the challenges of increase in demand, particularly from people with more severe illnesses.

I’m really pleased to report that emergency patients are seen more quickly here than anywhere else in the West Midlands.

Figures published this week show that 97.5 per cent of emergency patients were seen within four hours of coming through the doors of our accident and emergency departments.

Front-line staff have played a big part in this achievement and I’d like to thank them all for their continued hard work.

As part of our urgent care strategy to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and the length of time people who are admitted to hospital need to stay there, we’ve setup a number of initiatives.

One of these initiatives is the GP with the Ambulance scheme, where GPs are working with West Midlands Ambulance Service to prevent patients that have called for an ambulance from being taken to A&E or admitted to a ward if they can be treated in the community.

This means we’re able to provide a great range of services to our patients without them needing to go to hospital and,if required, refer them to other community resources.

This and other initiatives we’ve setup are all designed to reduce demand on hospital emergency services and leave them with the capacity to provide a safe and effective service to the patients that need it most.

If you’d like to find out more about the work we are doing, you can visit our website at southworcsccg.nhs.uk or follow us onTwitter at @SW_CCG.