Patients could soon be discharged from emergency departments at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust hospitals without seeing a doctor.

But doctors are concerned about the risks of the new model, called criteria-led discharge, a trust boss said.

In practice this would see doctors set the criteria in which a patient could be discharged without seeing them on the day of discharge, which is part of plans to free up emergency department doctors ahead of the busy winter period.

Speaking at a healthier communities select committee meeting, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust chief executive Ben Travis said: “[it would see] doctors talking to his or her team saying, ‘right, if these test results show up like this tomorrow the patient can be discharged.’

“It is called criteria-led discharge, rather than the doctor having to be there to sign off discharge for every patient, every day.”

But doctors were “taking a little while” to get “absolutely behind it” because of potential risks.

“The only way that this is going to work in practice is if our doctors and our senior doctors are absolutely behind it. I think that is why it has taken a little while to really fully embed because senior doctors are very sighted on those risks.

“Some doctors want to be 100 per cent sure and actually eyeball that patient before they say, ‘yes, you can go home today.’

“Their name is above the door, as it were, for every discharge of every one of their patients. It’s their professional reputation and standing, and registration, and therefore in a way it is encouraging in some respects they are taking it so seriously.

“They need to be assured the process is right before they give it the green light.”

He said the model would be monitored closely, particularly around re-admission rates, but had been put into place in other trusts.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is in the top five trusts in London for seeing people for treatment in the emergency department in four hours or less, Mr Travis said.