NHS non-emergency advice line ‘is showing steady improvement’

The NHS 111 number showed signs of a turn around during April, with many users saying they were satisfied with the service, NHS England said.

But the number is still experiencing teething problems, with 66,000 of the 514,000 calls answered in April taking more than a minute to answer.

A NHS England spokeswoman said: “The data published today on the performance of NHS 111 in April 2013 showed the service is steadily improving and is highly rated by those who use it – 92 per cent were very or fairly satisfied with their NHS 111 experience.”

Health experts will welcome the turnaround – many have said that the chaotic roll out of the system has contributed towards the troubles in accident and emergency departments.

In May, leading doctors warned that the “problematic” introduction of the advice line left patients not knowing where to turn to for help.

The service was supposed to be rolled out on April 1, but officials were forced to relax the deadline after it emerged that many of the 111 lines – which are run by 44 individual local bodies across the country – were not ready to “go live”.

Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “The latest NHS 111 figures do not give a full picture of the system’s performance.

“In many areas of the country, NHS 111 is still not operational, such as in Greater Manchester, or is relying heavily on support from other parts of the NHS, including local GPs.

“This situation is placing pressure on other already-overstretched NHS services that cannot afford to be diverting resources and time in order to prop up NHS 111.

“There remain significant concerns about NHS 111’s ability to deal with the volume of calls it receives and the quality of advice being given to patients.

“Any improvement in those areas where NHS 111 is operational is encouraging, but the Government needs to address the ongoing problems that are undermining NHS 111 and having a detrimental effect on other parts of the health service.”