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Danny Mortimer, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, responded to the publication of the Urgent & Emergency Care Clinical Review of Standards 

“The NHS has wanted to better support all its patients who need urgent care, especially those who are sickest, and it has been accepted for some time that the four-hour standard is no longer fit for purpose. 

“We will consider the details of the proposals with our members, but this feels like significant progress towards improving services by setting a more thoughtful way of ensuring accountability for the care we provide to those seeking urgent and emergency care. Our members are, of course, interested in how the standards will be translated into practice and how NHS England will adapt its routine oversight in response. Also, they need to understand how the standards can continue to be developed to be truly system-wide, particularly as the importance of the role of primary and community services to provide alternatives to hospital admission and support timely transfers of care cannot be overstated. 

“The ability of the NHS to meet these new standards needs thorough support from the Government; currently, the resources and people are not in place to match the aspirations that will rightly be set as a result of this work. The Chancellor did not feel able to address this issue in November; he must not fail to do so again.”

Dr Graham Jackson, chair of NHS Clinical Commissioners, which was involved in the project on behalf of NHSCC and the NHS Confederation, said:

"We welcome the wider clinical involvement in developing these proposals, which we will consider in detail with our NHSCC and NHS Confederation members. This feels like an important step forward to setting a more thoughtful and detailed way of ensuring accountability to patients seeking urgent and emergency care.

"There is also a strong interest in how the standards can continue to be developed to be truly system-wide, as primary and community services' resilience to prevent admission and ensure timely discharge are hugely important factors in system flow."