NHS Direct Service

NHS Direct plays a key role in the delivery of 24-hour health advice and information to patients and the public, handling over 2 million patient contacts each month.

As well as our established telephone service, handling over 600,000 calls each month, NHS Direct delivers self-care advice, helps to inform patients, and supports access to local health services in more ways than ever before. NHS Direct online (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk) receives around 1 million visits each month; and NHS Direct Interactive provides health information to homes with digital satellite.

We are supporting local models of Out of Hours and unscheduled care. We provide local, tailored solutions available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our integrated, partnership approach to the delivery of OOH services is backed by consistent, high quality, clinically safe advice.

NHS Direct already helps patients with dental problems and supports dental access in a number of areas across the country. We provide a number of solutions for the delivery of dental services to meet the challenges faced by PCTs in delivering the new dental contract.

We provide cost effective solutions to support those with long-term conditions. Our new services include cost effective, outbound calling programmes. These solutions screen patients and identify those where primary care referral or advice on self-care can help reduce the risk of hospital admission.

We offer creative approaches to improve efficiency in secondary care. We can provide services such as pre-operative calling of patients who are due to be admitted, providing them with information about their treatment and ensuring they have taken any preparatory steps necessary. We can also provide post-operative calling of patients, to check their condition following discharge, identifying any issues and put them in touch with the appropriate primary care services.

NHS Direct is also playing a central role in supporting the NHS Choose and Book programme. We are a national provider of the Choose and Book Appointments Line helping patients to book first outpatient appointments.