Acceptability of NHS 111 the telephone service for urgent health care: cross sectional postal survey of users' views

摘要

Background. In 2010, a new telephone service, NHS 111, was piloted to improve access to urgentudcare in England. A unique feature is the use of non-clinical call takers who triage calls with computerizeduddecision support and have access to clinical advisors when necessary.udAim. To explore users’ acceptability of NHS 111.udDesign. Cross-sectional postal survey.udSetting. Four pilot sites in England.udMethod. A postal survey of recent users of NHS 111.udResults. The response rate was 41% (1769/4265), with 49% offering written comments (872/1769).udSixty-ive percent indicated the advice given had been very helpful and 28% quite helpful. Theudmajority of respondents (86%) indicated that they fully complied with advice. Seventy-three percentudwas very satisied and 19% quite satisied with the service overall. Users were less satisiedudwith the relevance of questions asked, and the accuracy and appropriateness of advice given,udthan with other aspects of the service. Users who were autorouted to NHS 111 from services suchudas GP out-of-hours services were less satisied than direct callers.udConclusion. In pilot services in the irst year of operation, NHS 111 appeared to be acceptable to theudmajority of users. Acceptability could be improved by reassessing the necessity of triage questions usedudand auditing the accuracy and appropriateness of advice given. User acceptability should be viewed inudthe context of indings from the wider evaluation, which identiied that the NHS 111 pilot services did notudimprove access to urgent care and indeed increased the use of emergency ambulance services.