TY - JOUR T1 - Possible futures of acute medical care in the NHS: a multispecialty approach JF - Future Healthcare Journal JO - Future Healthc J SP - 125 LP - 132 DO - 10.7861/fhj.2022-0050 VL - 9 IS - 2 AU - John Dean AU - Mike Jones AU - Philip Dyer AU - Chris Moulton AU - Vicky Price AU - Daniel Lasserson Y1 - 2022/07/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/9/2/125.abstract N2 - Changing population demographics and needs are resulting in a continual rise in acute medical admissions. This review draws on the observations of the NHS GIRFT programme across England. Fundamental aspects of acute medical care are not universally provided, resulting in preventable hospitalisation and over-use of emergency departments. Such aspects include care outside hospitals; appropriately sized, staffed, located and configured acute medical units; multispeciality same-day emergency care (SDEC) pathways; multidisciplinary care on wards; and readmission prevention. ‘Hospital at home’ services are developing, and require local evaluation. SDEC is expanding. Digital technologies make it possible to provide acute care in and across more settings. Addressing the fundamentals of acute medical care, evaluating new service opportunities, strong clinical and managerial partnerships, better data for analytics, and a multispeciality, multiprofessional approach will enable a better level of care to be achieved. ER -