NHS Direct

Facts and figures

NHS Direct provides expert health advice and information 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our health information professionals such as nurses, health advisors and dental advisors can deal with a wide range of health queries.

A single telephone number, 0845 4647 for people in England, gives access to round the clock medical information, confidential advice and reassurance.

These facts and figures are correct as of 2nd April 2012.

Volumes

Including all commissioned services, NHS Direct handles 22,500 calls a day - around 8.2 million calls a year.

Services broken down (where figures are available):

		Call/web usage volumes (approx)*
	Coverage	Day	Year
0845 4647 (including click-to-call back) Launched nationwide in October 2000	24/7, 365 days a year Covers England	12,000	4.3m
Online Health and Symptom Checkers via the web and mobile app The full web suite was launched in December 2010. The app for Android and iPhone devices was launched at the end of May 2011	24/7, 365 days a year Covers England	27,500	10m
NHS 111 Launched between Aug-Dec 2010	24/7, 365 days a year Pilots led by NHS Direct in Lincolnshire, Luton, Nottingham City, and Lancashire Other pilots in County Durham and Darlington, Derbyshire and Isle of Wight.	As of 29 February 2012: Nearly 720,000 calls overall Nearly 50% (350,000) of these calls are from NHS Direct led pilots
Ambulance Category C calls	24/7, 365 days a year Covers 8 Ambulance Services	200	80,000
The Appointments Line (TAL) Launched in 2007	07:00 - 22:00, 365 days a year. Covers England	8,000	2.9m
West Yorkshire Urgent Care (WYUC) Launched in April 2009	24/7, 365 days a year. Covers 2.1m people over 5 PCTs in West Yorkshire	900	330,000

* where a full year of data is not available the yearly figure has been scaled up based on current daily data

Click-to-call back service

If a further telephone assessment is recommended following the use of an online health and symptom checker, patients can ‘click’ to get a call back from a nurse advisor. Over 755,000 calls have been generated by ‘click-to-call back’ since the first health and symptom checker was launched. This is around 30,000 click-to-call backs each month.

0845 service specific data

The top reasons for calling are abdominal pain, dental tooth/jaw pain, rashes, chest pain and ingestion of a toxic substance
The top reasons for using the online health and symptom checkers are abdominal pain, female sexual health issues, rashes & skin problems, colds and flu and diarrhoea and vomiting
Around 55% of calls are from women
Around 80% of calls are from people with symptoms
Around 15% of calls are requests for health information

The value of NHS Direct to the NHS

In 2010/11, 1.1m A&E attendances/999 calls, 1.6m GP consultations and 0.5m other face-to-face appointments were avoided through patients' use of NHS Direct's phone and web core services.

Telephone

50% of calls to 0845 4647 are completed within NHS Direct, where callers are given advice that allows them to care for themselves at home, only seeking further advice if symptoms persist
Only 30% of calls to 0845 4647 need urgent or emergency referral (including A&E, 999 and GP urgent)
Of the patients given self care advice, 22% would have gone to A&E and 31% would have gone to see their GP if NHS Direct had not been available

Web

Of the web users receiving self care advice, 31% would have gone to see their GP, and 3% would have gone to A&E if NHS Direct had not been available

How we work

NHS Direct has 31 sites across the country. 30 of these are contact centres linked into a single virtual contact centre.
NHS Direct employs 2,955 staff
- 2,445 are front line staff, of which 1,085 are trained nurses working on the frontline, including dental nurses.
NHS Direct has the capacity for over 170 nurses to work from home either permanently or for short periods when the service is busy.
We have unrestricted registration with the Care Quality Commission and received an overall rating of "excellent" from them based on their assessment for 2009/10. This included a review of its safety record.
NHS Direct constantly receive many more expressions of thanks than we do complaints and our complaints rate is currently less than one in every 10,000 calls. For every one complaint, we get 2.5 compliments.
NHS Direct has unrestricted registration with the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Following a routine unannounced inspection in January 2012, the Trust achived the highest level of compliance with no improvement actions required.
NHS Direct has been awarded the Information Standard quality mark as a provider of high quality health and social care information.

Feedback from people who use NHS Direct

Public awareness of NHS Direct - Continental Research - March 2011
(Representative sample of adults in England)

Spontaneous (i.e. top of mind) awareness of NHS Direct 36% and prompted awareness (i.e. after a name prompt) 88%
Awareness of the NHS Direct telephone and web service is highest amongst women in the 35-54 year old age group

NHS Direct User Satisfaction Monitoring for 0845 (core) service – February 2012 (IFF Research)

92% of callers surveyed were satisfied with the way NHS Direct handled the whole process, highlighting the quality of the advice given, the reassurance it provided and the speed and the politeness of staff as the top reasons for satisfaction
88% of callers followed the advice NHS Direct gave them
77% of callers would ‘most definitely’ recommend the service again
NHS Direct’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) was 76, which is considered excellent.The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of advocacy for a service or brand, as measured from users rating the service on a scale of 1-10. NPS is calculated by deducting the percentage detractors (scores of 1-6) from the percentage of promoters (scores of 9 & 10).