Impact of NHS Direct on demand for immediate care

doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7286.611/a

BMJ 2001;322:611 ( 10 March )

Letters

Impact of NHS Direct on demand for immediate care

NHS Direct must be better marketed and deal with problems more effectively

Meaningful review is still outstanding

NHS Direct can help accident and emergency departments

NHS Direct must be better marketed and deal with problems more effectively

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ In their responses to the paper by Munro et al,¹ who found that NHS Direct had no appreciable impact on the useof ambulance services and accident and emergency departments,McInerney et al² and Lawson et al³ addressed two importantpoints: do the patients know about NHS Direct; and does NHS Directmake any difference to the use of emergency services anyway? Atthe moment, the answer to both questions seems to be "no."

We are studying consultations with our out of hours general practitioners' cooperative (Bridgwater Out-of-hours and NightEmergency Service, BONES), comparing the outcomes for two groupsof patients who have called our service: those who have previouslycontacted NHS Direct about their problem and those who havenot.

Preliminary results show that, of the 1153 consultations with BONES over four weeks in October, in 1005 cases (87%) the patientssaid they had not tried NHS Direct. We . . . [Full text of this article]

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Impact of NHS Direct on demand for immediate care: John McInerney, Shekhar Chillala, Colin Read, Adrian Evans, G R Lawson, J C Furness, S Santosh, and S Armstrong
BMJ 2000 321: 1077. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Impact of NHS Direct on demand for immediate care: observational study: James Munro, Jon Nicholl, Alicia O'Cathain, and Emma Knowles
BMJ 2000 321: 150-153. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]