Reversing the urgent and emergency care spiral of decline

NHS urgent and emergency care is under intolerable strain. This strain is increasingly causing harm to patients. 1 Timely and high quality patient care is often not being delivered due to overcrowding driven by workforce and capacity constraints. 2 3 While the covid-19 pandemic has accentuated and arguably expedited the crisis; the spiral of decline in urgent and emergency care has been decades long and unless urgent action is taken, we may not yet have reached its nadir.