Unscheduled care is a term used to describe any unplanned health or social care - ranging from emergency hospital treatment, to patients who need help to care for themselves at home. Examples include phoning 999 during an emergency, or calling the NHS Wales Direct helpline before booking an appointment with your GP. 

The current unscheduled care system is complex, and can be confusing. Members of the public may go to one particular service when it would have been better for them to have gone somewhere else. The Wales Audit Office study will look in detail at the NHS Direct Service, Out of Hours Services, and the handover targets within A&E departments, to see where improvements can be made, and where bottle necks and problems are occurring.

The study team are interested in hearing people’s views and experiences of Unscheduled Care from across Wales, as well as ideas on how the current system could be improved. For obvious reasons, the team will not be able to investigate or offer advice on, people’s individual cases.

You can get in touch in the following ways:

Online questionnaire: visit our website 

Telephone: 029 2032 0610

Email stephen.lisle@wao.gov.uk

Notes to Editors:

• The Wales Audit Office is independent of government and is responsible for the annual audit of some £20 billion of annual public expenditure.
• Its mission is to promote improvement, so that people in Wales benefit from accountable, well-managed public services that offer the best possible value for money. It is also committed to identify and spreading good practice across the Welsh public sector.
• The Wales Audit Office was created in April 2005 through the Public Audit (Wales) Act, 2004, which expanded the functions of the Auditor General for Wales and enabled the transfer of staffs from the Audit Commission in Wales and National Audit Office in Wales to his employment.