Rochdale Infirmary Urgent Care Centre is bucking the trend in urgent care waiting times

Rochdale Infirmary

While queues are building up at A&E departments up and down the country, the situation at Rochdale Infirmary Urgent Care Centre (UCC) couldn’t be more different, with 98 percent of patients seen, treated and either admitted or discharged in under four hours in November 2016, beating the government standard by three percent. In November there were 3,975 attendances.

The figures are also impressive for October where staff hit 97 percent with 4,158 attendances and in December hit 96.6 percent with 4,272 attendances. The government standard is 95 percent.

Rochdale Infirmary UCC has an important role to play helping to take pressure off the A&E departments in the surrounding area including Oldham and Bury.

The re-designed UCC at Rochdale Infirmary opened in April 2011 and it is open 24/7, 365 days a year and is run by experienced nurse practitioners, paramedic practitioners, doctors and GPs.

Staff can treat non life-threatening injuries and ailments which don’t require an A&E department, but cannot wait for a GP or on-call doctor's appointment. Patients with very serious injury or illness (999 calls) are taken, usually by ambulance, automatically to neighbouring A&E departments or a specialist hospital, where appropriate.