Urgent and emergency care is a key part of the health care system. These services are highly visible to the public and their performance is critical to delivering high-quality outcomes as well as maintaining public support and confidence in the health care system. Urgent care is the care provided for illnesses or injuries that require prompt attention but are typically not sufficiently serious to need more specialist emergency care services. Emergency care is time-critical and more serious. Urgent and emergency care covers a continuum of services from the community to health centres to primary care clinics to hospitals, and integrated planning and implementation of these services can lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness, delivering economies of scope and scale across disease- and population-specific programmes.