COVID-19 Insight: Issue 9

In this month’s report, we look at the impact of the pandemic on urgent and emergency care services and pharmacy services in NHS trusts.

We want these insight reports to help everyone involved in health and social care to work together to learn from the pandemic. This includes:

• sharing and reflecting on what has gone well
• understanding and learning from the experience of what hasn't
• helping health and care systems prepare better for the future.

The impact of the pandemic on urgent and emergency services

In this section, we look at inspections of emergency departments, which took place in winter 2020, seeking to identify the key factors affecting services’ ability to provide a good standard of care, as well the challenges they faced.

Section 1: The impact of the pandemic on urgent and emergency services

Safe and effective use of medicines in NHS trusts

In this section, we share how chief pharmacists and medicines optimisation leaders within trusts assured themselves of safe medicines practice during the pandemic. They describe the challenges they faced, the good practice they had in place, and learning that can be taken forward.

Section 2: Safe and effective use of medicines in NHS trusts

Our data

We update our regular data including:

• the number of deaths of people in care homes
• numbers of deaths of people detained under the Mental Health Act.

Section 3: Our data