# Use urgent and emergency health services

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    ---
    type: "Service Family"
    title: "Use urgent and emergency health services"
    description: "Use emergency services for life-threatening danger and the current territorial urgent-care route for needs that cannot wait but are not emergencies."
    status: "population-complete"
    assertion_status: "normalized"
    jurisdiction: "nation-specific"
    observed_at: "2026-08-08"
    sources:
      - id: "health-throughout-life-source-register"
        title: "Health throughout life"
        resource: "../source/domain-registers/health-throughout-life.v1.yaml"
        author: "organisation:okf-uk-living"
        observed_at: "2026-08-08"
    ---

    # Use urgent and emergency health services

    ## Place in the process

    This topic sits within **Use specialist, urgent and health-redress routes** in the **Health throughout life** life-course
    domain. What comes before depends on the person's situation and nation; the first
    safe step is to select the current official route rather than assume one UK process.

    ## What this family covers

    Use emergency services for life-threatening danger and the current territorial urgent-care route for needs that cannot wait but are not emergencies.

    The ordinary discovery journey is to select the jurisdiction-specific route, follow
    the responsible authority or provider's current instructions, and retain the
    confirmation, referral, decision or next-step information it produces.

    ## If the ordinary route does not fit

    If a route is unavailable, the circumstances fall outside it, or the source signals
    an urgent, safeguarding, clinical or legal boundary, stop and follow that authority's
    exception or complaint handoff. The bundle records this branch but does not decide it.

    ## Official routes

    - [England: Urgent and emergency care services](https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/urgent-and-emergency-care-services/)
    - [Scotland: NHS services in Scotland](https://www.nhsinform.scot/care-support-and-rights/nhs-services/)
    - [Wales: NHS 111 Wales](https://111.wales.nhs.uk/)
    - [Northern Ireland: Health and Social Care Northern Ireland online](https://online.hscni.net/)

    These are links and original navigation summaries. A national discovery page is a
    handoff to the current service, not evidence that eligibility, evidence, costs,
    deadlines or remedies are identical across nations or providers.

    ## What may follow

    The result can feed the next family in **Use specialist, urgent and health-redress routes**, another enclosing
    process, or a provider-specific review or redress route. Use Graph to inspect the
    ordinary and exception episodes, sources, actors, requirements, outputs and outcomes.

    ## Review status

    This record is population-complete for discovery and requires specialist review
    before any legal, clinical, safeguarding or high-impact operational claim is
    described as release-grade.