Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) Delivery Support
Mobilisation of a co-located urgent treatment centre on the Hull Royal Infirmary site, improving 4-hour performance by 13 percentage points in its first year.
Hull’s health and care partners had long aimed to establish a fully co-located Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) at Hull Royal Infirmary, but previous attempts had been held back by operational and cross-organisational challenges. With a new opportunity to secure NHS capital funding, rapid system-wide agreement was crucial to enable a smooth launch.
The PSC supported partners to align quickly and confidently - helping shape a standard operating procedure and guiding mobilisation ahead of go-live. The results have been significant: the UTC now sees 4,500–5,000 patients every month, accounts for 34% of urgent and emergency care activity on site, and has contributed to improving 4-hour performance from 48% to 61% in its first year. Read more about the approach below.
Challenge
The mobilisation of a co-located Urgent Treatment Centre on the Hull Royal Infirmary site had been a longstanding ambition of system partners. City Health Care Partnership (CHCP), a community interest company providing community healthcare services in Hull, had previously attempted to co-locate a minor injuries unit on the site, but had faced challenges with staffing and cross-organisational working. This time round, there was an opportunity to bid for NHS capital funding. Generating system-wide agreement on a range of knotty operational issues was urgently required, so that the opening of the centre would go smoothly.
Approach
The approach to generating agreement involved preparing and facilitating a series of three workshops:
- Reviewing the ‘journey’ to mobilisation and progress made to date as a starting point, agreeing which priority questions to address
- Reaching consensus on operational questions, agreeing immediate and longer-term prioritisation
- Reaching consensus on the standard operating procedure and the operational readiness of the UTC ahead of ‘go live’ – this included the arrival and streaming process, and the inclusion/exclusion criteria used for UTC admissions
The PSC drew on existing relationships with all system partners in Hull and East Riding – most notably with CHCP and Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust – to facilitate system-wide agreement on mobilisation of the UTC in line with required timeframes. The approach also entailed developing user personas for typical users of the UTC, to fully understand the variety of concerns and needs from different cohorts and to keep patients at the centre of mobilisation conversations.
Impact
Through the series of workshops over Jan-Feb 2024, partners agreed on the streaming process, exclusion criteria and other important operational components, which The PSC helped to synthesise into a standard operating procedure.
The phased opening of the UTC happened to a tight timescale, as planned, over a period of two months. Since March 2024, there have regularly been between 4,500 and 5,000 patient attendances each month.
As intended, setting up the co-located UTC notably reduced pressure on Hull Royal Infirmary’s emergency department. Through April, May and June 2025, the UTC accounted for 34% of urgent and emergency care activity on the site – i.e. 34% of patients who would previously have attended the emergency department were re-directed and cared for in the UTC. This helps to explain why 4-hour performance across all types of accident & emergency care increased from 48% (average for 12 months prior to UTC opening) to 61% (average at 12-month point post-UTC opening).
Find out more
If you'd like to find out more about how The PSC can support your Trust or organisation transform urgent and emergency care and meet new government targets, get in touch with us at hello@thepsc.co.uk.