The BMA has criticised the NHS Direct service for failing to point patients in the right direction for when they are seeking out-of-hours medical advice, and says that services should be better integrated to avoid further patient confusion.
Despite NHS Direct being accessible to millions for health information and advice, a response to the Department of Health consultation: “Direction of travel for urgent care” from the BMA has said that patients do not feel well informed about how to access treatment out of hours and this needs to be fixed.
Part of the response says: “One of the key problems at the moment is with patients understanding how to access the most appropriate care for them at different times of the day or week. This needs to be urgently addressed. NHS Direct was supposed to sign post people to the right service. This hasn’t worked and should be a priority. Patients want a clear system that they understand. Better information is needed to ensure that patients are aware of local services and out of hours arrangements.”
They add that urgent care should be renamed “unscheduled care” and out of hours (OOH) advice for these patients should be better integrated to avoid patient confusion.
It adds: “It is critical for patients that services are effective and joined up. We are aware that it is frustrating for patients if they have to repeat their details and history to different professionals in the course of trying to access advice. This happens to ensure the correct patient is being advised and as a professional safety check.
“Better integration offers the opportunity to improve this practice. We are aware of some good examples where arrangements are in place, which enable adequate and appropriate access to the medical record by different professionals involved in delivering the OOH service.”
Any advice should be improved by “prompt feed-back to the GP practice on the details of an OOH consultation, or, due to technological shortfalls, such reports not being immediately intelligible”, the response adds.
NHS Direct is the NHS’s advice and information service for patients in England. It currently takes seven million phone calls each year to its dedicated phoneline 0845 4647 and 20m people visiting its website (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk) annually.
More recently, it has branched out to an interactive service with satellite and cable digital TV providers, currently reaching over 8m people as well as a dedicated Freeview channel (channel 108), available to a further 6m people.
Links
BMA response to DH Consultation