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AEC three year anniversary
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust is celebrating the three year anniversary of its successful and innovative ambulatory emergency care (AEC) unit.
The AEC unit provides rapid assessment of patients with an acute medical illness and same day emergency care, allowing patients who don’t need to be admitted to hospital to go home with ongoing clinical follow up as required.
This eases the pressure on the busy emergency department as well as inpatient wards at West Suffolk Hospital. On 24 June 2017 the emergency department saw 241 attendances; its highest number of attendances in one day.
The AEC unit sees and treats a wide range of health issues, including chest pain, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, pneumonia, and asthma. Opening within the acute medical unit in 2014, the AEC team has seen the number of patients increase year on year, almost month on month.
Dr Elizabeth Hamilton, acute medical consultant and ambulatory care lead at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, explained: “The AEC sees around 2,500 patient attendances a year, of which less than 10% are admitted into a hospital bed. This saves the beds for our most vulnerable patients, but most importantly allows as many of our patients as possible to go home on the same day they arrive. We have been actively developing the service over the last six months, with new initiatives including accepting referrals from the emergency department and improving referrals and communication with our local GPs. As a consequence, we are now seeing nearly 500 patient attendances a month, and are predicted to see over 5,000 in 2017.”
Debs Crelly, deputy general manager for general and emergency medicine at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our AEC unit shows that by working in different ways both within the hospital and with other local health partners, we can help manage and improve the services we provide. Not only is the unit delivering a great clinical service for patients, but it is a calming, light and friendly space to be treated too. We have received some great feedback from patients about the unit, with many commenting that they didn’t know we existed until they were brought up to us.”
Hannah Turner, 19, from Bury St Edmunds, was one of those patients: “My mum and I had never heard of the ambulatory emergency care unit until I was referred here. The staff have been so friendly, and explained everything that was happening so I was never unsure. It seems really efficient here, and my mum has been able to stay with me the whole time which is great. Waiting in the emergency department reception can be a bit daunting, seeing other patients rushed in, but here I’m less worried. I feel really well looked after and important, not like I was wasting the staff’s time, which is something you can worry about as a patient.”
In the future, there are plans for the unit to join with the surgical assessment team creating a larger acute assessment unit next to the emergency department, to further improve and increase the service and the type of conditions it can monitor.
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