Publish date: 16 January 2026
We have successfully introduced a new Urgent Community Response Pathway, which is being run alongside NWAS. This has helped triage over 1,500 calls to our single point of contact since being launched on 12 November 2025, significantly reducing the impact of those numbers attending hospitals and A&E departments. The pathway allows category three and four 999 referrals – rated as ‘urgent’ and ‘less urgent’ – to be triaged directly to Mersey Care and ensures ambulances are directed to higher-acuity cases.
Of those calls, 41% were dealt within the community by services such as 2hr Urgent Community Response, matrons, district nurses, urgent treatment centres (UTC) and walk-in centres (WIC), which helped to avoid hospital admissions.
During the busiest winter period, between 22 December 2025 and 4 January 2026, our urgent treatment and walk-in centres helped ease the pressure on A&E departments with a suite of videos being successfully promoted with more than 20,000 views, which resulted in 7,654 attendances of which 98% were treated and discharged within four hours.
Working alongside the region's health partners to help alleviate pressures on A&E by encouraging people to choose the most appropriate service for their health care needs, we received more than 2,000 calls to our mental health crisis lines and more than 30,000 district nursing consultations over Christmas and New Year, 28,000 of which were face to face.
Our success in helping the wider health system is illustrated below - larger version here.
