One Front Door: Why Digital Access Must Start in Urgent Care

How urgent care can lead the transformation of NHS access through smarter navigation, the NHS App, and integrated neighbourhood models

Introduction: Digital First Must Mean Urgent First

The NHS 10-Year Plan envisions a health service that is more personalised, prevention-focused, and neighbourhood-led. Digital innovation is positioned at the heart of this strategy, with the NHS App framed as the front door to a system built around people’s needs rather than institutional silos.

But here’s the critical question: Where should we start?

If we want digital transformation to improve access, reduce demand, and support system flow — then we must begin with urgent and emergency care (UEC).

At Urgent Health UK (UHUK), we believe urgent care is not just a point of pressure, but a point of digital opportunity. It's where millions of patients try to access help quickly — often in confusion, anxious, at risk and without a clear route through.

This is the gateway that needs to work first. It’s where digital tools can most tangibly improve lives — and relieve pressure on every part of the system.

Why Urgent Care Is the Natural Digital Front Door

Every day, patients interact with the urgent care system through:

GP Practices
NHS 111 calls or online
Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs)
Out-of-hours GP services
Minor injuries units and Walk-in centres
Urgent Care Response services
SDEC and rapid response hubs

These points of access are fragmented, often poorly integrated, and highly variable in how they connect to the rest of the NHS.

Yet this is where patients are making urgent choices — Where should I go? Can I wait? Who will see me?

Digital navigation, booking and triage should begin here, because:

Patients are actively seeking care
Delays or misdirection can result in harm
A&E and ambulance pressures escalate quickly when UEC flow fails
Poor UEC access pushes more demand onto GPs or Eds, reducing flow and slowly the system

If we embed digital intelligence here, we help patients get to the right care, at the right time.

The Evidence: Why Smarter Navigation Matters

The Tony Blair Institute (TBI) has shown that poor triage and navigation costs the NHS deeply:

29 million unnecessary GP appointments could be avoided annually
AI triage could save £340 million a year by diverting inappropriate UEC contacts
Public trust in traditional symptom checkers is low, but AI-assisted chat triage tperforms both NHS 111 online and conventional tools
Without better routing, emergency services continue to absorb preventable demand, increasing risk for patients who truly need urgent care

The DHSC 10-Year Plan and NHS Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan (2025–26) both emphasise the role of digital tools in improving flow, reducing unnecessary ED use, and strengthening prevention. Yet the success of these ambitions depends on where digital is deployed and how intelligently it is integrated.

Urgent care offers the perfect testbed — and the highest return.

The NHS App: From Information Portal to Access Hub

The NHS App is rightly identified as the future digital access point for the NHS. Over 33 million people have downloaded it, but it remains largely passive:

It presents records,
Displays appointment slots,
Links to 111 online triage.

To deliver on the 10-Year Plan, it must evolve into an active navigator that:

Offers smart triage and AI chat tools
Books into local urgent care services in real-time
Connects patients with neighbourhood urgent response teams
Integrates with same-day, virtual, and physical urgent care slots

This will only work if urgent care providers and neighbourhood teams are embedded into the digital access infrastructure.

That’s where UHUK members come in.

UHUK’s Role: Building the Digital Urgent Care Layer

UHUK is the national federation of social enterprise urgent care providers. Our members operate across England — often leading:

NHS 111 and clinical assessment services
Out-of-hours urgent GP provision
UTCs, walk-in centres, and home visiting
Virtual and hybrid urgent access teams
Community-based remote monitoring or “hospital at home” services

Our members are already:

Piloting AI triage systems alongside clinical triage for improved safety
Integrating booking capabilities into local digital systems and the NHS App
Creating urgent care pathways that span physical, virtual and home-based options
Partnering with ICSs to deliver digital-first neighbourhood models of urgent response

We work in some of the most deprived communities, designing services that tackle health inequality and overcome language and literacy barriers.

Urgent care is not just a contact point — it’s a community anchor. And in the digital age, it must be a system router.

Policy Shift Required: Putting Urgent Care at the Digital Centre

To deliver the 10-Year Plan’s promise of frictionless access, population health improvement, and efficiency, we propose the following actions:

1. Prioritise Urgent Care as the First Digital Layer

Commission urgent care providers to deliver AI-enhanced triage and digital routing
Position UEC as the default first step in digital access, not an afterthought
Fund rapid testing of new tools in urgent care environments

2. Embed Urgent Care Booking into the NHS App

Enable real-time booking into UTCs, virtual urgent appointments, and rapid responsots
Ensure local urgent care offers appear prominently in the NHS App’s symptom journeys
Build backend interoperability with urgent care providers

3️. Use Urgent Care to Connect to Neighbourhood Teams

Link digital urgent care triage to same-day neighbourhood team deployment
Integrate urgent care with out-of-hospital response models like SDEC, frailty teams, or palliative care access
Monitor and report on time to urgent intervention for community-based support

4️. Target Access Equity Through Social Enterprise Delivery

Commission digital urgent care models with proven reach into excluded groups
Support culturally competent, localised urgent care triage and response
Use UHUK members as testbeds for inclusive digital access models

A Practical Vision for the Next 12 Months

Here’s what a digitally transformed urgent care pathway could look like in practice:

A patient develops chest pain at 7:30 PM
They open the NHS App and describe symptoms
AI-assisted triage flags potential risk and offers a real-time booking at a local urgent care centre
The patient is seen by an advanced practitioner at 8:15 PM — escalation avoided
The encounter and test results are recorded in the Shared Care Record, available to the GP the next morning
If admission was needed, the same app could direct them to SDEC without a 999 call

This is not science fiction. It’s doable in now — if we start where demand is: urgent care.

Why This Matters System-Wide

Elective recovery cannot happen if urgent care flow is blocked.
Digital access equity cannot be achieved through static portals.
Neighbourhood care will fail if patients can’t reach it in crisis.

By anchoring digital transformation in urgent care, we gain:

Quicker wins on flow and pressure
Higher visibility of NHS improvement for patients
Stronger digital literacy and uptake across all age groups
A new model for integrated, intelligent access

Urgent care is the litmus test of whether digital transformation works — not in theory, but in the reality of patient lives.

Conclusion: One Front Door to a Stronger NHS

The 10-Year Plan rightly identifies digital access as central to a more effective, patient-centred health system. But strategy must meet reality.

If we’re serious about changing access, let’s change the experience where it’s needed most and used most — in urgent care.

UHUK and its members are willing and ready to be the digital foundation of neighbourhood-based, equitable, and efficient NHS care.

We invite DHSC, NHS England, and ICS leaders to partner with us to:

Embed digital access where it matters
Scale what works
Create a system where every patient knows what to do, where to go, and how to get care fast

Because the future NHS must have One Front Door — and urgent care is ready to open it.

Conor Burke
⁠CEO – UHUK