High quality care for all, now and for future generations: transforming urgent and emergency care services in England – the Evidence Base from the Urgent and Emergency Care Review

Executive summary:
 
The evidence base sets out to review the urgent and emergency system in England and draw out evidence to illustrate the main challenges it currently faces. Starting with overall patient experience, this document goes on to highlight issues within each part of the urgent and emergency care system in order of the perceived levels of patient need that it addresses, these are:
 
• Self care and self management;
• Telephone care;
• Face to face care;
• 999 emergency services;
• A&E departments; and
• Emergency admissions to hospital.
 
Two final sections follow, one examines the capacity and sustainability of the current workforce, and the other outlines the potential of urgent and emergency care networks to create a whole-system approach capable of addressing many of the current issues. A number of key messages emerge from each section of the evidence base.