NHS 111 Patient Experience Report
Download (PDF 852.07 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Walsall undertook engagement on people's experiences of using NHS 111 since the change of provider from WMAS to DHU. They wanted to look at whether the advice given by NHS 111 was impacting on attendance at the Urgent and Emergency Care Centre. They collected people's experiences via engagement events and a survey. 99 people responded.
The overall feedback on people’s experiences of using NHS 111 to access services was generally positive. People found out about NHS 111 from a variety of sources including medical professionals and media campaigns as well as through word of mouth.
Although most people were waiting a relatively short time for their calls to be answered, there was a large amount of feedback from people that their experiences could be improved by reducing waiting times. The 13% of people who said they had found it difficult to speak to NHS 111 were asked for the reason why and the highest number of responses was for long waiting times. It may also be that this refers to the time they waited for call back from a medical professional as these waits were longer on the whole with the highest percentage of people waiting for 3-6 hours for a call back. A
round a third of people were referred to ambulance services by NHS 111. Others had a call back from a medical professional or were advised to contact their own GP. Where people were referred to either the Hospital or Urgent Treatment Centre, there were some comments that appointments were not made or information about their call was not handed over to the other service.
There were some comments about the questions that were asked by NHS 111, with some feeling that the wrong questions were asked by call operators. For some people this may mean a misdiagnosis and one person said that they had sepsis but were misdiagnosed over the phone.
However, people who took part in the survey were generally happy with the service and did not offer comments on areas for improvement.
The report contains three recommendations about call back times, referral to other services and triage questions asked by call operators.