Updated 2 February 2018
Urgent Care Centre, Royal United Hospital (RUH) is the registered location for urgent care centre and GP out-of-hours (OOH) services provided by Vocare Limited based at the RUH. Vocare provides two services within Bath and North East Somerset (BaNES) under a contract with the BaNES Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The Urgent Care Centre Paulton is a GP OOH service provided at Paulton Memorial Hospital which shares the staff and processes with the Urgent Care Centre at RUH, it has been inspected separately as it is registered as a separate location with the CQC.
The urgent care centre service covers a population of approximately 540,000 people across the county of Bath and North East Somerset. Deprivation in BaNES overall is lower than the national average and it has relatively low numbers of patients from different cultural backgrounds.
The urgent care centre provides 24 hour care, seven days a week from the emergency department within the Royal United Hospital, Bath. This service accommodates NHS 111 referrals and walk in patients. Upon attendance patients present to the emergency department reception where basic details are taken and added to their electronic system which is shared with the urgent care centre. The patient is then assessed by an urgent care centre streaming nurse and then booked into the appropriate department if they require treatment.
There is a CQC registered manager for the urgent care service who is not based locally. Due to service growth in the South West of England Vocare have employed a regional director, local clinical director, clinical support manager and lead nurse practitioner who are all based locally to this particular service to provide visible local management and support.