Urgent Treatment Centres in Birmingham and Solihull

We shared our report The experiences of Solihull residents who try to access Urgent Care from 2023 and also highlighted relevant findings from our reports on accessing care in other venues from our community pharmacy reports Access and barriers to NHS Community Pharmacies in Birmingham – Healthwatch Birmingham and Access and barriers to NHS Community Pharmacies in Solihull – Healthwatch Solihull.

We also shared the main themes we have heard from people about their experiences of urgent care from 2022 – 2025 which included:

• Access to services – difficulties with the online booking system and a lack of awareness of needing to book appointments in advance of attending some services. However, experiences were mixed as some found the online booking systems easy to navigate.
• Patient caps and waiting list closures – people told us about their frustration about not being able to be seen if waiting times were too long close to closures of services, or if a service had reached its cap of patients for that day.
• Waiting times – we heard how short waiting times were valued when attending services, but some people experienced longer waiting times.
• Staff – people shared different views about staff at UTCs, highlighting good practice, but also staff shortages and when staff had not meant their expectations.
• Referrals to other services – we heard how sometimes people’s needs were unable to be met by urgent treatment centres and they were sent on to access care elsewhere such as A&E or to their GP practice.
• Facilities – we shared views on where suggestions were made to improve facilities at UTCs.Our full response can be downloaded below.