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Des Holden

Sep 28, 2026

3:57
Earlier I spoke to Des Holden, who's acting chief exec of East Kent Hospitals.
4:02
Same day emergency care, which often in the NHS people abbreviate to ESDEC, which may be something viewers have heard.
4:12
The idea is that we take people out of the emergency department where we think we can take their history, examine them, do the investigations we need to do and start to treat them quickly so that they don't need to come into hospital.
4:31
So the advantage to the public is we kind of wrap around them the medical and nursing and physiotherapy care they need that helps them avoid hospital admission because we know that hospital admission in itself is a much bigger thing for people to experience than if they can be treated quickly and effectively without having to go through that process.
5:52
What kind of difference do you think this is going to make to patients and also to staff?
5:57
So that's a great question, because I think for patients, the patients who we can take straight there will experience much, much quicker care, far less waiting for things to happen.
6:11
They will get the answers to their health related questions more quickly.
6:15
They will be treated more quickly.

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