NHS Direct

• What is NHS Direct?
• Using this website
• Android and iPhone app
• Safeguarding children statement
• Social media
• Calling NHS Direct
• Corporate information
  • NHS Direct board
  • Board meetings
  • Minutes of meetings
  • Operating statistics
    • Annual report 2010-2011
    • Annual review 2010
    • Quality Account 2009-2010
    • Annual report 2009-2010
    • Annual report 2008-2009
    • Annual report 2007-2008
• Freedom of Information
• Partnerships
• Terms and conditions
• Ordering promotional items
• Procurements and contracts
• Jobs with NHS Direct  

Annual review 2010

NHS Direct - Annual Review 2009/10

What we’ve done,
where we’re going

Who we are

Our vision is to provide remotely delivered care that is increasingly valued by patients and the wider health and social care system.

In order to achieve this, we have developed six strategic objectives to:

• raise the quality and productivity of our services
• increase the value we create for patients, the public, the NHS and social care
• improve the culture of our organisation through a strong set of values
• be a great place to work and an employer of choice
• take advantage of new opportunities and plan effectively for the future
• improve our corporate effectiveness and efficiency

We provide people in England with expert health advice, information and reassurance so that they can care for themselves at home or access appropriate healthcare. Our core service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by telephone and on the web. We also offer a range of other nationally and locally commissioned services for 70 NHS organisations. Our service is provided through 32 contact centres.

We answer around five million calls to our core service each year and around five million patients use our online health and symptom checkers.

 

We handle a wide range of queries via calls to our helpline (0845 4647) and visits to our online services which are available via www.nhs.uk/nhsdirect or our corporate website www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk, including:

• clinical assessment to enable people to care for themselves at home or to find the right care from the rest of the NHS
• information on local health services and support organisations
• advice on maintaining a healthy lifestyle
• information about illnesses, conditions, tests, treatments and operations
• complex enquiries about medication e.g. interactions, overdosing and poisoning
• information in response to national and local health scares, such as swine flu

The Care Quality Commission (the independent regulator of health and social care in England) gave us an overall rating of ‘excellent’ based on their assessment for 2009/10.

 

What we’ve done

Further integration with other NHS services

We have worked closely with many other NHS organisations to further integrate our services. We received approximately 128,000 non-emergency calls transferred to us from ambulance services across England for further clinical assessment. We also provide over 70 locally commissioned services for NHS organisations, including providing GP and dental out-of-hours telephone assessment services. In April 2009, we began to provide the telephone assessment service for West Yorkshire Urgent Care on behalf of five Primary Care Trusts.

Value to the NHS

The core services we provide, over the phone and web, deliver real value to the NHS by ensuring more appropriate and efficient access to urgent care and advice. Our research identifies that we recommend to around 49% of all our callers that they should go to a less urgent and lower cost point of care than they would have gone to if they had not sought our advice.

Our core services saved 2.4 million unnecessary appointments with GPs and other primary care services. They also saved 1.2 million unnecessary ambulance journeys and visits to accident and emergency departments.

 

Our response to the swine flu pandemic

During the year, we were part of the national response to the swine flu pandemic and delivered the specially commissioned National Pandemic Flu Service (NPFS). 2.7 million people used the NPFS to gain advice through the web and over the telephone without needing to leave home. Of these, 1.8 million patients obtained authorisation for access to antiviral treatment without the need to visit their GP.

When the swine flu outbreak started, and before the NPFS went live, we saw a surge of calls about swine flu to our core service (0845 4647) and a similar increase in the volume of visits to our online colds and flu symptom checker. During this time, despite enormous efforts and our staff working extra hours, access to our usual NHS Direct telephone service was not as good as we would have liked. Our patient feedback and performance statistics reflect this.

Web first strategy

Our strategy is to think ‘web first’. By providing services such as the online assessment and real-time web chat with nurses and health advisors, we are able to offer our services to more patients. In the last year, we have developed new health and symptom checkers covering colds and flu, contraceptive health, male and female health, and mental health.

On World Mental Health Day (10 October 2009), we launched a new online health and symptom checker to provide help and advice for people concerned about their mental health and so far over 220,000 people have used the service.

 

Continuously improving

Over the past year, we have improved the efficiency and effectiveness of our own operations so that we can do more for less. This has involved working closely with front line staff, managers and representative bodies to bring the performance of our contact centres up to the highest standards within the industry, and introducing new practices including homeworking for our nurses.

We completed a challenging financial year with a surplus of £448,000 compared to £2,529,000 in 2008/09. NHS Direct had set itself an ambitious £17 million savings target for the year in order to meet contract price reductions and to fund its cost pressure and investment plans. We achieved this surplus after returning further funds in-year to the Strategic Health Authority. This was made possible by the reduced promotional requirements and activities due to the national flu pandemic.

Where we’re going

NHS Direct will continue to support patients, GPs and other NHS and social care organisations by providing care remotely using the telephone and internet. We aim to improve the quality of our services as measured by what our patients think of us.

We are committed to working with the wider NHS to meet the challenges ahead and continue to provide a valued service to our patients and commissioners.