Accident and Emergency Care Support
Non-hospital emergency care, defined as any service which provides first contact urgent care other than that available in the traditional hospital-based accident and emergency (A&E) department and has the following characteristics: open access; immediate advice, assessment, examination or treatment; therapeutic capacity; staffed by primary care professionals or specialists in a planned generalist community setting; and attendance driven by lay perceptions of the need for urgent care.
Interventions falling into the definition: primary care teams in A&E departments; community services in A&E departments (e.g. 10 local general practitioners were recruited to work in the A&E department on a sessional basis); nurse-practitioner services (e.g. nurse practitioner performance or effectiveness in comparison to other professional groups); minor injuries units (e.g. free-standing emergency centres); general practitioner out-of-hours co-operatives; flexible hours/open access primary care schemes (e.g. introduction of an emergency primary care centre); and telephone consultation services (e.g. patients given an 'after-hours' primary care telephone number on utilisation of a hospital emergency department).