Date published: 28 January 2026
A new urgent response pathway, run in partnership with the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS), has played a major role in helping health services within Cheshire and Merseyside handle the challenging demand for services this winter.
The Urgent Community Response NWAS Pathway, run by Mersey Care alongside NWAS, has helped triage over 1,500 calls to the Trust’s single point of contact since being launched on 12 November 2025, significantly reducing the impact of those numbers attending hospitals and A&E departments during the busiest time for healthcare in the calendar.
The pathway allows category three and four 999 referrals – rated as ‘urgent’ and ‘less urgent’ – to be triaged directly to Mersey Care and ensures ambulances are directed to higher acuity cases.
“This is a great example of partnership working within the NHS to ensure our communities use the right services for their health issues and allow emergency services to concentrate on life and death situations,” explained Lee McMenemy, Director of Mersey Care’s Community Services.
“It’s early in the partnership but already you can see the impact it is having on our services at the busiest time of year and helps us contribute to the wider effort during the winter period.”
Between 12 November 2025 and 4 January 2026 those calls were triaged by Mersey Care’s Single Point of Contact on behalf of NWAS, 41% of which were dealt within the community by services such as 2hr Urgent Community Response, matrons, district nurses, urgent treatment centres (UTC) and walk-in centres (WIC), which helped to avoid hospital admissions.
Jon Price, NWAS’ Consultant Paramedic for Cheshire and Merseyside, said, "This approach ensures patients receive the most appropriate care, often keeping them out of hospital and helps us keep ambulances available for the sickest patients. So far, over 5,000 people have been assessed via this pathway to date."
During the busiest winter period, between 22 December 2025 and 4 January 2026, Mersey Care’s UTC and WIC services also helped ease the pressure on A&E departments with a suite of videos being successfully promoted with more than 20,000 views of the videos, which resulted in 7,654 attendances of which 98% were treated and discharged within four hours.
Working alongside the region's health partners to help alleviate pressures on A&E by encouraging people to choose the most appropriate service for their health care needs, Mersey Care received more than 2,000 calls to our mental health crisis lines (see above infographic) and more than 30,000 district nursing consultations over Christmas and New Year, 28,000 of which were face to face.
Using their social media messages and dedicated webpage, Mersey Care continue to promote important messages around urgent treatment and walk-in centres, self care, NHS 111 and how to access mental health support in a crisis. The public are still being urged to help the campaign by arranging winter vaccines, keeping warm, staying active and looking out for others during the winter period.
