Leading doctors say pressure on NHS being increased by 111 line

Analysis of the NHS urgent care line 111 has shown that there has been a surge in the number of patients being referred to A&E departments and GP surgeries, meaning added pressure on already overstretched hospitals and GPs.

The doctors’ union the BMA, who produced the figures, has had long-standing concerns over NHS 111.

Although NHS England says that the service is meeting increasing demand, the BMA is concerned that appropriate advice is not being delivered to patients, leading to some being incorrectly directed to already busy hospitals and GP surgeries.

BMA’s GP lead on NHS 111, Dr Charlotte Jones, is concerned that patients are not receiving appropriate advice. She said “There is no doubt that if a patient needs any form of medical care they should be referred through to an appropriate doctor or nurse, but there are serious doubts as to whether this huge increase in workload is clinically necessary.

“Anecdotally, GPs have reported to the BMA that patients have been referred to them with colds, sore thumbs or other conditions that could have been treated safely by sensible advice over the phone, advising a patient how to self-care, such as picking up medication from a local pharmacist.”

Dr Mark Porter of the BMA, says that staff who have little or no medical knowledge was causing an issue.

“A fundamental problem with NHS 111 is that it employs non-clinically trained staff who follow a formulaic script rather than using clinical judgement to assess how calls are dealt with.

“Understandably this is likely to lead the call handlers, with limited experience of medicine, to be cautious and refer patients to the NHS when a trained professional could have encouraged them to self-care.
“Key NHS services cannot afford to be taking on unnecessary work when they are struggling to treat the number of patients who do need genuine care.

“It is also an enormous waste of patients’ time if they are sent to a GP or A&E when they could have had their issue dealt with during a few minutes on the phone.”

A spokesman from NHS England, said that the figures show that there is huge demand for the 111 service from the public.

“To date, it has coped impressively with this pressure, with the proportion of referrals to GPs and emergency services remaining steady despite the surge in demand.

“Given this popularity, however, we are continuing to look at ways to make the service even more robust including asking GPs to help support call centres and provide patients with the ability to get high quality medical advice as quickly as possible.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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