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Emergency services collaborative

  • Last modified date:
    17 August 2007

The emergency services collaborative is a national programme to reduce the time taken to diagnose, treat and discharge or transfer patients in A&E wards.

The EMERGENCY SERVICES COLLABORATIVE is a national programme that aims to:

  • Improve emergency care across the whole system
  • Improve patient, carer and staff experience
  • Reduce total journey times through A&E Departments

All sites will work towards achieving the NHS Plan target that 100% all patients will be admitted, discharged or transferred within 4-hours from arrival at A&E.

Every 24-hour A&E department in England is involved, with its associated local health and social care systems. There are six waves of 30-35 sites. Each wave lasts 14 months each.

The Collaborative employs improvement methodology widely tested in the US and in established Collaborative programmes in the UK, such as the Cancer and CHD Collaboratives. Clinical staff undertake local diagnostic work and then test short cycles of improvements to address specific bottlenecks and constraints. The improvements are robustly measured, and when fully implemented details of changes will be available on the Collaborative web-site.

Learning from one another by adoption and adaptation of successful improvements is crucial to the Collaborative. Improvement case studies related to the four project areas within the Collaborative (minor illness and injury, clinical assessment, medical admissions and surgical admissions) can be found on the Emergency Services Collaborative website.

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