Briefing for Care Providers: Implications of the Urgent and Emergency Care Plan 2025/26

The Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Plan 2025/26 sets out a series of coordinated actions aimed at reducing pressure on acute services this winter, with a strong emphasis on system-wide collaboration. For care providers, the plan contains a number of important developments affecting discharge, community-based care, mental health pathways, use of technology, and public health. This briefing outlines the relevant changes for providers. 

 

1. Falls and Preventable Admissions

The plan recognises the significant impact that preventable falls in care settings have on NHS demand: “Falls in social care, home and community settings make up around 75% of the £2.3 billion NHS cost.” 

Care providers are expected to engage in fall prevention as a system-wide priority. This may include use of care technology (see below) and collaboration with NHS partners on risk assessments and mitigation strategies, the details haven’t been outlined. 

 

2. Discharge and Flow

Discharge from hospital is another major theme of the plan. Several commitments are directly linked to social care include: 

• Eliminate “any internal delays to discharge of more than 48 hours in all settings.” 

• Discharges must be to “appropriate rehabilitation, reablement or recovery support, based on the ‘Home First’ principle.” 

• The 3.9% increase in the NHS minimum contribution to adult social care is earmarked for surge planning and step-down care. 

Care providers must be ready to receive patients earlier and coordinate closely with hospital discharge teams. Flexibility and availability will be critical during peak demand in winter planning by setting out local performance targets 

 

3. Better Use of Beds

The plan also encourages a shift from bed-based to home-based care, where appropriate: “Reviewing bed usage and returning people to home-based care where possible will reduce long stays and increase capacity.” 

A best-practice example from Leicester showed: 

“25 beds across 3 sites were relocated into a single 15-bed high dependency unit in an independent care home… resulting in reduced delays and significant savings.” 

Providers with residential capacity may be asked to reconfigure services or partner with NHS teams on short-term step-down support. Consideration of high-dependency units in care homes is promoted as an effective model. There is no time frame for this 

 

4. Infection Prevention and Vaccination Campaigns

In anticipation of winter respiratory viruses, the plan sets out several requirements related to care providers: 

• “Hospitals to offer vaccination on discharge to any patients going into a care home.” 

• “Work with sector partners to proactively promote vaccination offers to those who provide and draw on care.” 

• “Explore the direct admission of flu patients into community bedded capacity… follow appropriate IPC policies and procedures.” 

Care homes should have robust infection prevention protocols and clear arrangements for accepting patients directly from hospitals. Active participation in flu and RSV vaccination campaigns will be vital. 

 

5. Care Technology: National Standards on the Horizon

Recognising the role of technology in preventing harm and improving independence, the plan promises: “We will set new national standards for initial priority care technologies by March 2026 and publish guidance to support providers to implement technology effectively.” 

Providers should prepare to review or upgrade their digital care systems, including fall monitoring, remote alerts, and digital care planning. Funding or guidance may accompany the rollout of these standards. There is no plan of implementation or funding as of yet 

 

6. Emergency Response: Alternatives to 999

To reduce pressure on emergency services, the NHS will work with social care to implement: “Single Points of Access (SPoAs) that accept calls directly from care homes and GPs, avoiding the need for 999 calls.” 

Care providers should familiarise themselves with their local SPoA arrangements and ensure staff know how to escalate concerns without automatically resorting to emergency services. Hwo to contact your SPoA is here 

 

7. Mental Health Discharges: Shared Responsibility

Mental health services are being asked to reduce length of stay and out-of-area placements, with support from social care: “Use of the 10 high-impact actions for mental health discharges… to support flow through all mental health and learning disability and autism pathways.” 

Care homes supporting people with mental health, autism or learning disabilities should expect closer integration with crisis and discharge planning teams. Providers may be asked to take a role in reducing re-admissions for high-intensity users. 

 

8. Funding and Performance Accountability

The plan reinforces expectations under the Better Care Fund: “The newly formed Discharge and Admissions Group will… foster effective collaboration between the NHS, local authorities and social care providers to help prevent avoidable admissions.” 

Performance monitoring will focus on three key BCF metrics: 

• Emergency admissions for over-65s 

• Delayed discharges 

• Admissions to care homes for over-65s 

Care providers may see increasing involvement in local system reviews and improvement plans. Transparent data-sharing and demonstrable outcomes will become a standard expectation. 

 

9. Vaccination of the Workforce

All NHS trusts must now offer occupational health vaccination services onsite for staff. However, the plan also extends this expectation: “Work with sector partners to proactively promote vaccination offers to those who provide and draw on care.” 

While not yet mandatory, care providers will be expected to encourage staff flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccination and may need to coordinate with local health teams for access. 

 

Summary of Actions from NHSE website 

Actions	Impact for patients and carers
Focus as a whole system on achieving improvements that will have the biggest impact on urgent and emergency care services this winter	By the year-end, with improvement over winter, we expect to: – reduce ambulance wait times for Category 2 patients – such as those with a stroke, heart attack, sepsis or major trauma – by over 14% (from 35 to 30 minutes) – eradicate last winter’s lengthy ambulance handover delays by meeting the maximum 45-minute ambulance handover time standard, helping get 550,000 more ambulances back on the road for patients – ensure a minimum of 78% of patients who attend A&E (up from the current 75%) are admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours, meaning over 800,000 people a year will receive more timely care – reduce the number of patients waiting over 12 hours for admission or discharge from an emergency department compared to 2024/25, so this occurs less than 10% of the time. This will improve patient safety for the 1.7 million attendances a year that currently exceed this timeframe – reduce the number of patients who remain in an emergency department for over 24 hours while awaiting a mental health admission. This will provide faster care for thousands of people in crisis every month – tackle the delays in patients waiting to be discharged – starting with the nearly 30,000 patients a year staying 21 days over their discharge-ready-date, saving up to half a million bed days annually – increase the number of children seen within 4 hours, resulting in thousands of children every month receiving more timely care than in 2024/25
Develop and test winter plans, making sure they achieve a significant increase in urgent care services provided outside hospital compared to last winter	– improve vaccination rates for frontline staff towards the pre-pandemic uptake level of 2018/19. This means that in 2025/26, we aim to improve uptake by at least 5 percentage points – increase the number of patients receiving urgent care in primary, community and mental health settings, including the number of people seen by Urgent Community Response teams and cared for in virtual wards – meet the maximum 45-minute ambulance handover time standard – improve flow through hospitals, with a particular focus on reducing patients waiting over 12 hours, and making progress on eliminating corridor care – set local performance targets by pathway to improve patient discharge times, and eliminate internal discharge delays of more than 48 hours in all settings – reduce length of stay for patients who need an overnight emergency admission. This is currently nearly a day longer than in 2019 (0.9 days) and needs to be reduced by at least 0.4 days
National improvement resource and additional capital investment is simplified and aligned to supporting systems where it can make the biggest difference	Allocating over £370 million of capital investment to support: – around 40 new same day emergency care centres and urgent treatment centres – mental health crisis assessment centres and additional mental health inpatient capacity to reduce the number of mental health patients having to seek treatment in emergency departments – expansion of the Connected Care Records for ambulance services, giving paramedics access to the patient summary (including recent treatment history) from different NHS services, enabling better patient care and avoiding unnecessary admissions