News
NHS Direct breaks new ground in record year
31 July 2008
NHS Direct has released its annual report and accounts for 2007/8. It
says that in its 10th year of operation it has recorded it best ever
performance and also won a number of awards.
Matt Tee, NHS Direct Chief Executive, said: “A national newspaper
described us a couple of months ago as a ‘national treasure’ and more
recently as, ‘one of the key achievements of the last 60 years of the
NHS’. Each month we provide hundreds of thousands of people with high
quality, evidence-based health information and advice. There is no doubt
about it, the service provided by NHS Direct is now recognised as an
international benchmark.”
In 2007/08 NHS Direct achieved its best-ever performance and all
Department of Health performance targets in relation to access, quality
and finance: 93% of all calls were answered within 60 seconds and 98% of
the most urgent calls received a nurse assessment within 20 minutes. 50%
of all calls were completed within NHS Direct without the need for
onward referral to another healthcare professional and emergency and
urgent referrals reduced from 32.2% to 25.4% of all calls.
Last year it took almost 5 million calls on the 0845 number. The
effectiveness and popularity of its website improved: monthly visits
increased 59% to 3.5 million in March 08, with over 30 million visits
during the year — a tenfold increase since 2002.
It received more than a third less complaints than in the previous
year (551 in 07/08 compared to 981 in 06/07), and recorded over three
times as many compliments as complaints (1800 in 07/08 compared to 938
in 06/07).
The adverse incident rate also fell from 0.29 in 06/07 to 0.18 per
10,000 in 07/08. For the fourth year in a row we generated a surplus —
£5.1 million in 2007/08 — and delivered planned savings of £8.5 million.
New services
NHS Direct also broke new ground in the types of services delivered
to the NHS: it was commissioned by more than 90 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs)
to support patient access to dental cover, particularly out-of-hours. It
provided the ‘access and assess’ element of GP out-of-hours services for
over 12% of the population. An appointment-reminder service provided to
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust halved missed outpatient
appointments in just five weeks.
In 2007/08 our services stretched across the UK when the Department
of Health asked us to design, build and deliver the UK-wide helpline for
pandemic flu. FluLine which will provide patients rapid access to an
initial assessment, advice, triage and where appropriate, authorisation
of antiviral medicine treatment. The service builds on NHS Direct’s
expertise of running large-scale health contact centres, of developing
clinical algorithms and of delivering services over multiple
communication channels.
Awards
In July 2007 Birmingham OwnHealth won the Healthcare Partnership
Award at the national Communiqué Awards, which celebrate the best in
medical education and PR within the health sector. A few months later in
February 2008, the service won the regional round in the ‘Inequalities
in Health’ category of the NHS Health & Social Care award, and is
shortlisted for the national award.
NHS Direct was also pleased to receive an award for best dental team
in the North West at the Dentistry Awards, 2007. In collaboration with
Rocky Lane Dental Practice, NHS Direct provides emergency out-of-hours
dental cover to a consortium of PCTs across the Manchester area.
At a time when government attention seems to give higher priority to
NHS Choices and there has been little mention of NHS Direct in recent
health policy documents such as the Darzi review (see: , NHS Direct is
running an advertising campaign to emphasise ‘We’re Here’. The
advertising, which will run from 21 July until 14 October, will
highlight that NHS Direct is everywhere — "whatever your health worries,
wherever you are, you can reach us".
NHS Direct can be found at
www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk
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