CLINICAL ASSESSMENT SERVICE
NEMS’ Clinical Assessment Service (CAS) provides an efficient, streamlined referral pathway helping patients access the information and treatments they need.
If you are seeking urgent medical attention outside of your GP’s operating hours, our skilled and experienced clinicians will be on-hand to deliver care, advice, and treatment when it’s not accessible through your regular GP.
How Our CAS Works
Our Clinical Assessment Service is mainly accessed via the NHS’s 111 non-emergency phone service, and the NHS Pathways symptom assessment system. It operates 24/7, 365 days a year.
Whenever someone calls 111, they’re asked a series of questions to decide how urgently they need to receive medical attention, and which NHS service is best-placed to attend to them at the moment they call.
In some situations, the NHS Pathways assessment will determine that the patient should see a GP urgently, but their registered practice may be closed or otherwise unavailable. This is where the NEMS Clinical Assessment Service comes in.
Where a symptom assessment concludes that the patient’s condition should be managed by a CAS, they’ll ask for the patient’s permission to transfer the symptom assessment details to a local CAS provider. From there, the CAS provider can receive the patient’s details electronically and contact them to arrange the next steps in their treatment.
The Clinical Assessment Service is required to deliver against a number of core NHS England KPIs, focusing on factors like patient safety, patient experience, and clinical quality.
How Our CAS Works
Our Clinical Assessment Service is mainly accessed via the NHS’s 111 non-emergency phone service, and the NHS Pathways symptom assessment system. It operates 24/7, 365 days a year.
Whenever someone calls 111, they’re asked a series of questions to decide how urgently they need to receive medical attention, and which NHS service is best-placed to attend to them at the moment they call.
In some situations, the NHS Pathways assessment will determine that the patient should see a GP urgently, but their registered practice may be closed or otherwise unavailable. This is where the NEMS Clinical Assessment Service comes in.
Where a symptom assessment concludes that the patient’s condition should be managed by a CAS, they’ll ask for the patient’s permission to transfer the symptom assessment details to a local CAS provider. From there, the CAS provider can receive the patient’s details electronically and contact them to arrange the next steps in their treatment.
The Clinical Assessment Service is required to deliver against a number of core NHS England KPIs, focusing on factors like patient safety, patient experience, and clinical quality.
Attend ED Disposition Service
In recent years, we’ve added an additional referral source where we can contact patients who have received an ‘Attend ED’ disposition via a non-clinical NHS Pathways 111 assessment.
When patients receive a disposition advising them to attend an emergency department, we’re usually able to leverage patient contact records and our wealth of medical expertise to recommend the correct course of action.
Through this referral service, we consistently redirect 70% of the patients referred to us away from ED and to alternative courses of treatment, thereby reducing the pressure of admissions to both acute trusts in our area, and helping patients avoid the disruption of an emergency department visit.
Limitations of the Clinical Assessment Service
With every new patient contact, NEMS follows a strict adherence to universal NHS values and our own patient-focussed philosophy to deliver the best possible standard of medical advice, care, and treatment.
Having said that, we’re required to work within NHS England’s existing infrastructure, and there are certain limitations to the NEMS Clinical Assessment Service that patients should understand.
NEMS Community Benefit Services is intended to support patients’ primary healthcare providers, and cannot deal with routine matters, such as making an appointment with a patient’s own GP, discussing test results, or making referrals for non-urgent hospital admissions or treatments.
At NEMS, our remit is to “do that which cannot safely wait until the patient’s own surgery is next open”. While our facilities are equipped to deal with urgent health issues outside of GP surgery operating hours, we will only carry out this kind of work when deemed necessary by a thorough assessment of conditions.
If a problem can wait to be seen by a patient’s registered GP, or can be managed by a patient following a phone consultation, NEMS will advise the patient accordingly, but may not administer treatment from our own facilities.
Attend ED Disposition Service
In recent years, we’ve added an additional referral source where we can contact patients who have received an ‘Attend ED’ disposition via a non-clinical NHS Pathways 111 assessment.
When patients receive a disposition advising them to attend an emergency department, we’re usually able to leverage patient contact records and our wealth of medical expertise to recommend the correct course of action.
Through this referral service, we consistently redirect 70% of the patients referred to us away from ED and to alternative courses of treatment, thereby reducing the pressure of admissions to both acute trusts in our area, and helping patients avoid the disruption of an emergency department visit.
Limitations of the Clinical Assessment Service
With every new patient contact, NEMS follows a strict adherence to universal NHS values and our own patient-focussed philosophy to deliver the best possible standard of medical advice, care, and treatment.
Having said that, we’re required to work within NHS England’s existing infrastructure, and there are certain limitations to the NEMS Clinical Assessment Service that patients should understand.
NEMS Community Benefit Services is intended to support patients’ primary healthcare providers, and cannot deal with routine matters, such as making an appointment with a patient’s own GP, discussing test results, or making referrals for non-urgent hospital admissions or treatments.
At NEMS, our remit is to “do that which cannot safely wait until the patient’s own surgery is next open”. While our facilities are equipped to deal with urgent health issues outside of GP surgery operating hours, we will only carry out this kind of work when deemed necessary by a thorough assessment of conditions.
If a problem can wait to be seen by a patient’s registered GP, or can be managed by a patient following a phone consultation, NEMS will advise the patient accordingly, but may not administer treatment from our own facilities.
