NHS Direct

Home working pilot

From 22 December 2009 to 12 January 2010, NHS Direct ran a pilot scheme to test temporary home working for our nurse advisors. We wanted to see how feasible it would be to quickly and safely activate staff to temporarily work from home in the event of an emergency.

Little did we know when we started the pilot that England was about to see some of the worst winter weather in decades. The pilot enabled some nurse advisors to continue working when travel to their contact centre base would have been extremely difficult or impossible.

Clinically safe

The pilot built on previous experience when NHS Direct trialled permanent home working with 18 nurse advisors in 2008. Full Health and Safety Assessments were carried out at the nurse advisors’ homes, and they were equipped with a telephone and desktop PC securely linked to their contact centre base.

For this pilot, the nurse advisors taking part were provided with dedicated laptops, giving them full access to the NHS Clinical Assessment System and to all NHS Direct’s policies and procedures. We ensured the safety of our staff working from home and the security of information they have access to.

For the purposes of the trial, only calls from those who were less seriously unwell were handled by the home workers and they were able to call back patients waiting for nurse advice in the same way they would have done if they were based in the contact centre.

Festive period

Home working was particularly helpful to us during the busy Christmas and New Year period when we experienced exceptionally high demand for our services. Over the pilot’s three week period, an additional 7,500 calls were handled by nurse advisors taking part in the home working pilot. Our analysis shows that the quality of those calls was of a similar high standard to those handled in the contact centres.

We are now evaluating the trial, including feedback from the staff who took part, with a view to carrying out home working on a temporary basis in the future.