Bumper Christmas for NHS Direct

Tags: A Information NHS Direct

30 Dec 2005

NHS Direct has had its busiest ever Christmas, with a record number of people using both the telephone and online health advice service over a three-day period.

While calls to NHS Direct were up by 10% on last year, the number of visits to the NHS Direct Online website leapt by almost a third. Health enquiries asscociated with over-indulgence featured prominently over the festive period.

Between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day the 24/7 the NHS Direct telephone advice and information service took 10% more calls than the same period last year, with a total of 73,945 calls answered.

The busiest day was Christmas Eve when a total of 27,946 calls were answered.

A spokesperson for NHS Direct told E-Health Insider the figures were very encouraging. "We have made a concerted effort to make people aware that NHS Direct can help them over this period. We've been trying to make people aware of both the website and our guide in Thompson's local telephone directories."

According to NHS Direct many callers were "coping with the consequences of overindulgence", with common inquiries including abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. Other problems included sore throats, coughs, earache, toothache, fever and chest pain.

By comparison, over the same three-day Christmas period there were 49,301 total visits to the NHS Direct Online website, up 31% on the same period in 2004. The busiest day on the website was Boxing Day when the website recorded 20,556 visits.

The most popular website topics over the three day period included chickenpox, rashes, colds and flu, diarrhoea and pregnancy.

The spokesperson said that "hot topics" had been set up on the NHS Direct website to deal with the most common enquiries from the public over Christmas. "We're very pleased to see that people are making use of the service and the website."

Readers Comments

Really ???

30 Dec 05 09:27

The increase in calls may be more due to some PCT's forcing "out of hours" calls to be triaged by NHS Direct before allowing the patient to attend the out of hours service, rather than a sudden upsurge in patient awareness.

Happy Christmas

roger@roycroft.eclipse.co.uk

03 Jan 06 19:55

As a retired GP who spent forty years answering calls such as NHS Direct now appears to be revelling in my consolation was that I eventually succeeded in educaiting a fair proportion of my patients to use the intelligence they had to make rational decisions in the future. Will NHS Direct achieve this or merely be a wooley sounding board? Also, should we not be presented with a detailed statistical breakdowns of their activity with outcomes - suicides, deaths in transit, increases in 999 calls and Casualty attendances would be a help - and naturally a carefully presented breakdown of the costs incurred?

Patient education...

04 Jan 06 14:09

As a nurse working for NHS Direct on Christmas Eve I took 2 calls from patients asking if they should ring their OOH service as they had mouth ulcers. Another rang us for advice on what to do about sore lips. These types of calls are not unusual. Does the retired GP want to have these patients in his surgery? I feel we have created a bit of a monster as we have provided the public with instant access, or more or less instant access, to the NHS and the public are using it.

Many practices closed early on 23rd Dec, and at least one had the incorrect telephone number listed on the answer phone. The number listed did not take incoming calls. What would the parents have done without NHS Direct? They were going to take the baby to A&E an inappropriate use of the service. I was able to assess and re-assure the parents that the child could wait the 90 mins. for the OOH service open. They had the re-assurance that someone was there for them even when there GP was closed.

We have created a bit of a monster in NHS Direct as the general public now feel they are entitled to instant access to healthcare. A service they are never going to get from a GP service.

outcomes information is more useful than mere statistics

04 Jan 06 14:17

As well as the information on activity ie statistics, it would be useful to see information on the percantage of callers who got through successfully and percentage who were satisfied with the speed of the resonse and very importantly the usefulness of the information provided.

Mouth ulcers? Sore lips? Let's get serious!

04 Jan 06 14:57

It'd be surprising if the 100 or so people in Oxfordshire who've just had their heart operations cancelled, and the various individuals unable to get costly cancer treatment on the NHS, felt that the investment in an NHS Direct service that provides instant advice for these sorts of problems was money well-spent.

IMHO this looks like a luxury the cash-strapped NHS can ill afford.

Comparisons

05 Jan 06 20:00

Following on from the GP's comments above, yes it would be really interesing to see the kind of analysis he is suggesting ... and at the same time, for the same analysis to be run for general practice.

Exept we all know that would never be allowed to happen.