How Faster Access to Care Could Transform Employee Health Outcomes

Employee healthcare is often framed around wellbeing. Benefit packages typically include access to counselling, fitness apps, fast-track physio, or nutrition advice. All of these have value, but after working for 30 years in frontline healthcare, it is apparent that we are sometimes missing the understanding that the most important thing we can give people is not lifestyle support, but time. Not time off, but time saved.The hours that make the difference between a preventable hospital admission and the loss of life. 

Two conditions in particular, sepsis and cardiovascular disease illustrate this point. Far from being rare, they account for tens of thousands of deaths in the UK each year. Both are conditions where minutes and hours really do count, and where faster access to basic clinical interventions could transform outcomes. Yet they are often absent in current employee healthcare models. 

Sepsis: When Every Hour Matters 

Sepsis is triggered by infection but can become overwhelming to the body very quickly. What looks at first like “flu”, a chest infection, a urine infection can escalate to life-threatening organ failure in a matter of hours. 

• Around 200,000 people in the UK develop sepsis each year, with nearly 50,000 deaths. 

• For every hour of delay in treatment, the risk of death increases by 4–9%. 

The clinical evidence is unequivocal: adults with sepsis, every hour of delay in treatment increases the risk of death by 4-9%. Recent studies continue to reinforce what frontline clinicians have long known, faster treatment quite literally saves lives. 

National guidelines reflect this urgency. Adults identified as high risk should receive antibiotics within one hour, with assessment guided by risk scores like NEWS2. This scoring system tracks vital signs such as breathing rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and level of alertness. When the score rises, it signals that someone is at high risk of rapid deterioration and needs urgent intervention.  

For the workforce, the implications are profound. Sepsis doesn’t wait until Monday morning, and yet most employee healthcare models are not designed to recognise or act on it. An employee who develops fever, confusion, and rapid breathing on a Friday night may be left to navigate the stretched NHS 111, or may simply wait it out until services reopen. By the time they reach hospital, precious hours have passed. 

Now, compare that to a system where the same employee could access a GP or advanced practitioner on the same day, undergo urgent blood tests, and, if needed, start antibiotics straight away. The contrast is stark; it can mean survival instead of death, and full recovery instead of months in intensive care unit. 

Cardiovascular Disease: Still the Leading Threat 

Cardiovascular disease remains the UK’s biggest killer and costs the economy almost £30 billion a year, including over 23 million lost working days.  

Many heart attacks and strokes are preventable. For those that aren’t, outcomes are dramatically improved if treatment is fast. 

• UK guidelines call for rapid diagnosis with an ECG on arrival at hospital. 

• If an artery is blocked, it should be reopened within 90 minutes. 

• Every minute lost means more heart muscle damage, higher disability, and greater risk of death. But symptoms rarely start in hospital. They start at home or at work. And many employees often dismiss them or face days or weeks waiting for a GP appointment. By then, the damage may be irreversible. If, instead, employees had access to same-day ECGs and blood tests through their workplace health scheme, with clear routes to urgent hospital referral, many of those poor outcomes could be prevented. The technology exists, the pathways exist, we now need employers to see healthcare as more than a perk and invest in something that saves lives. 

Rethinking Employee Healthcare 

If employee healthcare is to be truly fit for purpose, they must move beyond wellness apps and resilience coaching. They must be designed to intercept serious illness before it spirals. That means: 

• 24/7 triage able to flag red-flag symptoms. 

• Rapid access to clinicians who can escalate and prescribe, not just signpost. 

• Direct pathways into urgent diagnostics and treatment. 

Above all, it means recognising that in medicine, time itself is the treatment. 

The Employer’s Role 

Employers who integrate faster access into their healthcare provision will not only reduce deaths and long-term disability, but also cut absence, improve productivity, and demonstrate genuine leadership. 

This is more than wellbeing. It’s about saving lives, protecting families, and safeguarding businesses. 

References  

• National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Suspected sepsis: recognition, diagnosis and early management (NG51 update, adults 16+). Updated March 19, 2024. 

• Im Y, et al. Time-to-antibiotics and clinical outcomes in patients with sepsis and septic shock: a prospective nationwide multicentre cohort study. Critical Care. 2022. 

• Leung LY, et al. Door-to-antibiotic time and mortality in patients with sepsis. European Journal of Internal Medicine. 2024. 

• UK Sepsis Trust. The Sepsis Manual, 7th ed. 2024. 

• European Society of Cardiology. 2023 ESC Guidelines for the management of acute coronary syndromes. European Heart Journal. 2023. 

• Gulati M, Levy PD, Mukherjee D, et al. 2021 AHA/ACC Guideline for the Evaluation and Diagnosis of Chest Pain.Circulation. 2021. 

• British Heart Foundation. Heart & Circulatory Disease Statistics 2024 (v3). 2024