Boosting referrals into urgent community response services

Integrated care boards, community providers and primary care networks have been asked to increase the volume and consistency of referrals into urgent community response (UCR) services to improve patient care, ease pressure on ambulance services and avoid admissions.
Community providers are already working hard to scale up their UCR services and have been very successful in helping people access care at home, making swift progress since NHS England introduced a national direction to ensure a greater degree of consistency across these services.
However, Community Network members say there is scope to go further to drive up the number of patients who benefit from UCR services, including through boosting referrals into the service from key system partners.
There is a role for both systems and national policymakers in supporting this and in encouraging system partners to work collaboratively on a vision and strategy for increasing referrals to UCR services.
A more robust national dataset would support both providers and the national team to benchmark activity levels and understand where more work is needed to increase referrals.
Further work to develop local relationships, as well as national support to tackle issues around information governance and data sharing, are central to moving these processes forward.
Greater prioritisation and investment at national and local levels remains important to ensure community providers are appropriately resourced to meet demand for UCR services.