NHS Direct reports lower calls, higher web traffic

25 Mar 2008

NHS Direct has reported a fall in telephone calls received, attributed to an increased usage of its website for health information and advice.

Though full figures are yet to be disclosed, the service has issued initial figures showing that on a month-by-month basis, caller numbers are down approximately 7% on 2006, with around 400,000 calls taken each month.

However, whilst call numbers are falling, use of the service’s website has increased, with the board reporting around 3m visits a month.

An NHS Direct spokesperson told EHI Primary Care: “We have seen a huge rise in the number of people clicking onto our website and using the different sections for information and advice. This is great news for us, and we actively encourage users to do this.

“A lot of the time people call and hang up after hearing the message advising them to check the website. Having said that, we are concerned that numbers of people calling our helplines are falling, and we will be working to raise awareness of the telephone number.”

Despite call numbers falling, the service reports an increase on the numbers of calls answered, with 98% answered without having to leave patients on hold.

The service continues to operate under funding from the Department of Health, worth around £150m a year and earlier this month, EHIPC revealed how calls answered by the service in the last year were costed at just over £16 each.

As well as information and advice, the service looks after the Choose and Book helpline, and selected out-of-hours services.

NHS Direct also recently launched a new text messaging service that allows users to obtain details of local health facilities.

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NHS Direct

Joe Fernandez

Reader's Comments

Future proof?

25 Mar 08 08:40

The NHs Direct website is rightly recognised as a good and useful resource for patients, but it has taken the best part of ten years to get there. For the first few years at least, it was disorganised and the quality of content patchy.

Let's hope the rumours currently circulating about it being absorbed into the NHS Choices website are not true. Choices is about where NHS Direct was in those early days. It would be a shame to see something good taken away from patients only to have it replaced by something that may achieve the same level of quality and consistency in several years time - purely to satisfy the whims of ministers.