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Our services

Urgent care

0845 4647

 

The 0845 telephone helpline provides people in England with expert health information and advice over the phone.Using algorithms validated by a national clinical advisory group, trained health and nurse advisors are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, helping people care for themselves or a family member at home, or providing advice on the most appropriate health services to contact.

Patients calling with a health information or medicines enquiry can speak to one of NHS Direct’s highly trained health information advisors, who deal with a range of queries such as:

• Information on local health services and support organisations
• Information about illnesses, conditions, tests, treatments, operations and treatment options
• Explaining information that callers have found on the internet – currently more than half of callers with a health information enquiry have looked on the internet before calling the 0845 service
  Answers to complex enquiries about medication e.g. correct doses and administration of medicines etc
• Information in response to national and local health emergencies e.g. faulty breast implants

Web and mobile

• NHS Direct has developed a suite of 40 online health and symptom checkers (H&SC). The H&SCs provide self-care advice, so that patients can manage their symptoms at home, get advice on the most appropriate health service to contact, or the option to ‘click’ to get a call back from an NHS Direct nurse advisor (click-to-call back)
• NHS Direct has launched a free mobile app for iPhone® and Android™ smartphones so people can access trusted health advice wherever they are (more information about the app is available here). The initial assessment symptom checker is also available on web-enabled mobile phones by typing mobile.nhsdirect.nhs.uk into the mobile phone browser
• NHS Direct has an online enquiry service, providing personalised responses to non-symptomatic health information requests. This service handles around 35,000 requests a year

Category C ambulance calls

NHS Direct is commissioned by eight ambulance services to handle their Category C (low priority) telephone calls, helping ensure that 999 lines remain available for high priority emergency calls.

• Approximately one third of emergency calls made to ambulance trusts are non-urgent (Cat C)
• Over 15% of the Category C calls handled by NHS Direct result in self-care advice and over 30% can be directed to appropriate primary care services

GP and dental out-of-hours (OOH)

NHS Direct provides around 20 GP or dental out-of-hours services on behalf of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and these services account for around 8% of all calls made to NHS Direct in the out-of-hours period.

Single points of access

NHS Direct delivers a single point of access for urgent care across the five PCTs in West Yorkshire - West Yorkshire Urgent Care (WYUC). The purpose is to improve residents’ access to a number of urgent care services by providing one number for the whole of West Yorkshire for advice and treatment.

NHS 111

• In Nottingham City, Lincolnshire and Luton NHS Direct is providing the full end-to-end service, working closely with GP out-of-hours organisations and ambulance services
• In Lancashire NHS Direct is working in a consortium with the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Fylde Coast Medical Services to deliver the pilot
• There are other pilots running in County Durham & Darlington, Derbyshire, the Isle of Wight, Croydon and Hillingdon. NHS Direct is providing a health information service in all of these pilots except Isle of Wight
• The Department of Health’s national specification for NHS 111 is that, as a minimum, it should be able to:
  - complete an initial assessment on the first call
  - refer callers to other providers - e.g. GP OOHs - without the caller needing to be re-triaged
  - transfer clinical assessment data to other providers and book appointments where appropriate
  - dispatch an ambulance without delay where necessary
• Over 180 NHS Direct staff are trained to use NHS Pathways to answer calls for NHS 111 
• We expect NHS Direct to play a major role in delivering the NHS 111 service when it is rolled out nationally. This will involve working alongside local commissioners (including emerging Clinical Commissioning Groups) and potential partners such as GP out-of-hours providers and ambulance services. Work is ongoing to bid for contracts in response to tenders 
• NHS Direct will continue to deliver the 0845 4647 service as normal until the NHS 111 service is rolled out nationally by April 2013

Management of long-term conditions

OwnHealth®

NHS Direct provides remote support for nearly 500 people with long-term conditions in Nottingham City. Patients receive regular telephone-based coaching and advice from experienced care managers to enable them to meet their health goals and reduce their need for face-to-face care. 

Telehealth and telecoaching

 

• In South East Essex, NHS Direct provides a monitoring service for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Patients have access to equipment in their homes to submit their vital signs. NHS Direct can quickly identify any possible changes to a patient’s condition, and will alert local clinicians (such as community nurses) to any issues, often preventing hospital admission.
• In Leeds, Hull, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes, NHS Direct provides a similar service for patients with COPD. In addition, NHS Direct provides mental health monitoring in Leeds and Hull, and a monitoring service for patients with Congestive Heart Failure and diabetes in Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes.
• NHS Direct delivers ‘Nottingham Healthy Change’ which connects people who have cardiovascular disease risk factors to locally-delivered lifestyle groups.

Supporting patient choice

The Appointments Line (TAL)

The Appointments Line is managed by NHS Direct, and is one of the main ways patients can book their first hospital or clinic appointments using Choose and Book. TAL advisors can book appointments for patients, give them information about the hospital or clinics on their list, and tell patients what dates and times are free for an appointment.