Alex Garner, Quin Ashcroft, Dale Kirkwood, Vishnu Chandrabalan, Hedley Emsley, Suzanne M Mason, Nancy Preston, Jo Knight
{"title":"Evaluating the Impact of NHS Strikes on Patient Flow through Emergency Departments","authors":"Alex Garner, Quin Ashcroft, Dale Kirkwood, Vishnu Chandrabalan, Hedley Emsley, Suzanne M Mason, Nancy Preston, Jo Knight","doi":"10.1101/2024.09.03.24312252","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<strong>Background</strong> Since December 2022, the NHS has experienced large-scale strikes over pay by staff. Strikes heavily impact elective care delivery. The NHS cancels approximately 12 million elective care appointments each year. One million appointments have been cancelled due to strikes between 2022 and 2024. During this time emergency care is prioritised, and in a recent opinion piece, the president of the Royal College of Emergency medicine claimed the Emergency Department ran ‘better than usual’. The aim of this paper was to investigate changes in patient flow into hospitals through the ED during the strike periods.","PeriodicalId":501290,"journal":{"name":"medRxiv - Emergency Medicine","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"medRxiv - Emergency Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.03.24312252","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background Since December 2022, the NHS has experienced large-scale strikes over pay by staff. Strikes heavily impact elective care delivery. The NHS cancels approximately 12 million elective care appointments each year. One million appointments have been cancelled due to strikes between 2022 and 2024. During this time emergency care is prioritised, and in a recent opinion piece, the president of the Royal College of Emergency medicine claimed the Emergency Department ran ‘better than usual’. The aim of this paper was to investigate changes in patient flow into hospitals through the ED during the strike periods.