A&E appointments should be introduced in response to coronavirus, says Royal College head

Appointments to be seen in A&E could be introduced permanently in response to coronavirus, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said. 

Dr Katherine Henderson said it would cause "enormous harm" to patients if Britain returned to crowded casualty units with "elastic walls".

Instead, she said patients should be given a "contact point" such as the NHS 111 line to book a slot in an emergency department, or to be seen directly by a specialist or diverted to the care they need. 

"The old way of doing things involved emergency departments having elastic walls," Dr Henderson told MPs. "We were able to have an infinite number of patients. We were never able to say: 'We're full, we're at capacity.' We now need to recognise that we can't do that."

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Source: The Telegraph, 16 June 2020