"Terrible service from NHS 111"

I used the NHS 111 Service yesterday. It was awful, truly awful. The call handlers were terrible. I rang at around 4p.m. in the afternoon, got an assessment and was told that someone would ring me back. They didn't ring me back that day, I waited till 11 o'clock in the night.

Being unwell, and sleeping badly at night, I didn't sleep well and didn't get up till 10a.m. I turned my phone on at 10a.m. when I woke up and found that three messages had been left between 9a.m. and 10a.m. Yes three messages!! All by three different people; the last person left a stroppy message saying that his call back was the last one that I'd be getting. So with that they closed the case!!! To give someone three call backs in the space of one hour is ludicrous. The common sense thing to do is to give someone a call back after one or two hours; not three constant call backs within the hour. They have to think that the person could be ill in bed and needs to get up. When I rang NHS 111 and the call handler told me that my case had been closed so very quickly because of this, the call handler only wanted go over it with me all over again to give the same assessment that I’d yesterday, with the same time consuming questions. An absolutely appalling service; the NHS really is going downhill. A shocking service. They closed the case because they didn’t want to give me the patient a service, they wanted to cross me of their list and get their list down.

Barry O