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Emergency care for children in London will be overhauled to try to cut hospital admissions.
A report says the NHS is failing children and urges health bosses to “significantly transform” services.
It recommends that London hospitals set up paediatric assessment units, staffed by specialists who will decide whether children need to be admitted to hospital or go home.
Healthcare for London, which published the report, also wants to improve children's health services outside hospitals, so those with long-term conditions can have more care at home.
Thousands of children are admitted to hospital by doctors who are not properly trained or because they want to meet government A&E waiting time targets, the report said.
Dr Julian Redhead, head of emergency medicine at St Mary's hospital in Paddington, said: “Children can become very scared in hospital and that can set a precedent for the rest of their lives.
"If children have to sit in A&E with a lot of adults who have been drinking or taking drugs and not behaving well it can be frightening.”
The report says there has been a huge rise in the number of children at A&E because parents are more worried about minor conditions such as fever, rashes and abdominal pain.
Last year 700,000 went to London casualty departments — a 30 per cent rise in four years.
The paediatric assessment units are expected to save four children a day from an unnecessary stay at each London medical institution.
Some hospitals already have children's A&E wards but they are not always staffed by paediatric specialists.
One of the closest systems to Healthcare for London's plans is at St Mary's, which has a children's A&E ward and a “halfway house” where nurses observe children to see whether they have to be admitted to hospital.
Dr Redhead said this would allow for tests “when otherwise they may have been admitted to hospital”.
The report, which sets out a 10-year plan, said: “In London we are not meeting the health needs of children and young people as well as we can.”
