The Surrey Emergency Care System: a countywide initiative for change

Modernisation is at the core of government policy. Within the NHS it has variously focused on accident and emergency, coronary heart disease, clinical governance and information technology although each strand has tended to operate in isolation. The Surrey Emergency Care System is a programme combining the strands into a single countywide initiative and that lays the technical and clinical foundations of a future integrated unscheduled care network. This paper describes the programme, its potential impact, and offers some insight into the barriers to change that the project has met so far.