"NHS24 - very slow and poor"

Dear patients dad

Thank you for sharing your experience on Care Opinion. I’m sorry to learn you were unwell and hope you have received the required care and are doing much better.

I read your story with concern and your level of frustration is clear. I’m sorry to learn of this.

Our service is designed to ensure patients and callers are managed as safely and effectively as possible. Following the capture of the demographics and call reason, advice will be sought from a Clinical Supervisor on how best to manage a patient’s care.

We do appreciate that callers who phone 111 can be in pain, anxious, worried or upset about their health or that of a loved one. Unfortunately, there are times when access to the service takes longer than we would like. We appreciate how frustrating the wait times can be for callers and assure you this is one of our top priorities. The demand for our service has risen exponentially in recent times with calls offered to the service in excess of 2 million last year. We work hard to continually forecast predicted demand on the service to try to minimise wait times. We have recruited additional staff and have opened a further contact centre recently in Dundee. We also provide indicative wait times on our phone menu so that callers at least have an expectation of the potential wait time when calling. Signposting on our phone menu to NHS inform, where people can obtain health information online, also assists.

However, it is absolutely appreciated that an extended wait time is not a good experience. Especially, as you say, when advised to re-contact the service should symptoms change or worsen.

From what you have shared, at the time of your call to us, we considered your symptoms required further assessment by a Healthcare Professional. I am sorry they were unable to assist your situation. I see you consider NHS 24 should have referred you to the Emergency Department. It would be helpful to review your contact with 111 to determine how this was managed. If you would be kind enough to contact me directly, then I would arrange for this to happen. You can call me on 07814 299944 or email Patient.Experience@nhs24.scot.nhs.uk. We always welcome opportunities to review the care we provide, therefore I do hope to hear further from you.

I wish you well meantime.

Kind regards

Shona

Hi I

Thank you so much for contacting me directly. It was a pleasure to speak with you. I was sorry to learn of your recent surgery and I hope your health continues to improve. I also hope you manage to minimise your intake of the sweeter things in life!

It was good to have an opportunity to hear from you on how it felt to navigate our system. I hope my responses concerning the number of calls managed by the service, our hard work in relation to staffing levels and in managing calls to an endpoint, thereby mitigating against callers waiting on a return call from us to progress their care, was helpful.

I took on board your comments, specifically in relation to the information contained within our phone menu etc. I will share this with the appropriate team.

I have asked for a review of your call to us. This will allow us an opportunity to determine if there is anything we could have done differently. Such reviews are welcomed by us, so thanks for providing your details to allow us to progress this.

Best wishes and take care meantime.

Shona