Emergency care specialists renew call for out-of-hours services to be located in hospitals

Out-of-hours urgent and emergency primary care services should be located in hospital emergency departments with immediate effect, specialists have said.

In a joint position statement the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and Urgent Health UK, the federation of social enterprise providers of unscheduled primary care, said that the move would secure safer, simpler, and more effective access for patients with urgent healthcare needs outside normal GP clinic hours.

Chris Moulton, vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said, “Recent research by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has confirmed that around …