NHS Direct answered over 5 million calls through the core telephone service in 2009/10, meeting its call volume target for the year. This included 141,787 Category C (non-urgent) 999 calls passed to us by Ambulance Trusts.
During the year, 57.9% of calls were completed by NHS Direct without the need for onward referral to another service, exceeding the 50% target set by our Commissioners. Only 24.8% of calls were referred to emergency or urgent care, again within the 25% target set for us.
In addition, there were 17.9 million visits to the NHS Direct website, including over 5 million visits to our online symptom checkers which currently cover colds and flu, mental health, men’s sexual health and contraception advice. Such is the popularity of these online tools, that NHS Direct is working with a consortium of leading IT and health specialist organisations to develop a full suite of online clinical assessments which will be available to patients from this summer.
