New standards for emergency surgery care, published by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS), have identified that, although emergency patients account for half the NHS surgical workload, mortality and complication rates vary widely.
The RCS estimates that the care of emergency surgery patients comprises between 40% and 50% of surgical work and in general surgery alone account for 14,000 admissions a year to intensive care in England and Wales at a cost of at least £88 m and mortality rates of 25%. The report demonstrates that there is a lack of detailed outcome measurement for emergency surgery patients and that this is preventing hospitals from understanding how they can improve. Surgeons believe that dedicated operating theatre time for emergency cases; better care for high risk patients, before and after surgery; and greater availability of consultants would save lives and shorten hospital stays for emergency patients. The standards, entitled Emergency Surgery: Standards for unscheduled surgical care, offer the new GP Commissioning Consortia detailed specialty-by-specialty advice on the clinical standards for emergency surgical care that should be met by hospitals they send patients to. The standards have highlighted the need for improved timeliness of surgery and better access to theatres, better access to consultant care, better monitoring of emergency patients and dedicated wards and access to critical care.
