Coventry, West Midlands -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/12/2010 -- According to the latest figures released at the NHS Direct AGM, each call made to Nurses employed by NHS Direct now costs the taxpayer over £26 (1). With over 5 million calls dealt with in the last year, the CEO of NHS Direct says the cost of providing the core service was £131 million pounds. As a comparison, the newest online service available to anyone in the UK, http://www.thanksdr.co.uk, which is staffed entirely by Doctors, costs only £25.

How do the two services differ? NHS Direct is a government funded body, but when you call, you speak to a medically unqualified phone operative, or a Nurse. ThanksDr is staffed by British qualified, experience Doctors. Whilst ThanksDr is an online service only, 50% of all queries are dealt with within an hour.

“The UK lags behind other countries in our provision of online health services. Whilst the NHS Direct website has been a good starting point, we needed a doctor-led service which can provide professional opinions and better customer support,” says Dr Clare Craig, founder and Managing Director of ThanksDr.co.uk. “We’ve had a huge amount of positive feedback since launching only a month ago, and have answered 50% of our queries within an hour.”

Over half of the ThanksDr enquiries have been from people wanting a second opinion for themselves or a loved one, often because of a concern that something has been missed or a mistake has been made. Others have used the service as a first contact with a doctor; to seek information that they have been unable to find elsewhere or to ask about an embarrassing condition. One 74 year old user of the site commented “I was very satisfied with both the speed and depth of the reply.  This was highly professional, helpful and above all did not offer any simplistic solutions.  Excellent in every respect.”

Why does NHS Direct cost so much? Partly it’s staffing problems. According to the report, this year the proportion of staff leaving within a year of joining rose to 33% from 20% last year and there was also a rise in sick leave with 9.6% of frontline staff absent. These factors both contribute to only 69% of phone operatives' and nurses' working time being spent with patients (2).

NHS Direct claim to be cost effective by preventing unnecessary visits to GPs and emergency services, however, in their latest report they state that they’ve been unable to deal with 40% of calls, having to refer them to other services.

In July, Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GPs committee, called the call centre part of NHS Direct “an interposition between the patient and healthcare” amidst pressure on the Government to scrap the call centre. Ignoring this advice the Government plans for a new 111 number to be run alongside NHS Direct as the first port of call in accessing non-emergency healthcare, further increasing financial pressures on the NHS and burdens to the tax payer. This must call into question the future of NHS Direct.

References
1. http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/en/About/AGMBoardMeeting
2. http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/en/About/~/media/Downloads/Annual%20report%202009-10.ashx