Accident and Emergency Departments
(asked on 7th January 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of callers to (a) NHS Direct and (b) NHS 111 were (i) referred to hospital accident and emergency departments and (ii) sent to such departments by ambulance in each year from 2005-06.
This information is not available in the format requested.
Around a quarter of calls to NHS Direct over the period 2007/08 to 2011/12 resulted in an emergency or urgent referral.
For the period 2011/12 – 2013/14, the proportion of calls triaged by NHS 111 which resulted in an ambulance being dispatched or the caller being recommended to attend accident and emergency (A&E) was 18.3%.
However, the figures on NHS Direct from NHS Direct’s Annual Reports contain the percentages of urgent and emergency onward referrals; these comprise not just calls referred to A&E, but also to 999, and urgent primary care referrals. In the NHS 111 data collection published by NHS England, referrals to primary care are separate from A&E referrals and from ambulance dispatches. Therefore, the percentages for the two services cannot be directly compared.
The following table lists the proportion of calls to NHS Direct which have resulted in emergency and urgent referrals for each financial year from 2007/08 to 2012/131.
Period | % of emergency and urgent referrals |
2007/08 | 28% |
2008/09 | 24% |
2009/10 | 26.4% |
2010/11 | 24.9% |
2011/12 | 27% |
2012/13 | 34.7% |
Source: NHS Direct National Health Service Trust, Annual Report & Accounts for financial years 2007/08 to 2012/13
The table below shows counts of NHS 111 calls where (i) callers are recommended to attend hospital accident and emergency departments, and (ii) an ambulance is dispatched2, from August 2010 to November 2014. The figures are averages from published monthly data.
2010-11 (August 2010 – March 2011) | 2011-12
| 2012-13
| 2013-14
| 2014-15 (April 2014 – November 2014) | |
Calls offered | 187,630 | 616,155 | 1,894,057 | 8,785,341 | 8,150,979 |
Calls where person triaged | 112,388 | 425,815 | 1,254,339 | 7,064,219 | 6,565,416 |
Calls where A&E recommended | 7,444 | 28,560 | 80,232 | 526,520 | 515,593 |
Of calls triaged, proportion where A&E recommended | 6.6% | 6.7% | 6.4% | 7.5% | 7.9% |
Calls where ambulance dispatched | 13,618 | 54,145 | 151,014 | 756,768 | 720,656 |
Of calls triaged, proportion where Ambulance dispatched | 12.1% | 12.7% | 12.0% | 10.7% | 11.0% |
Source: NHS England – NHS 111 Minimum Data Set (www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/category/statistics/nhs-111-statistics)
Notes
1. The NHS Direct National Health Service Trust, Annual Report & Accounts reports list the following Key Performance Indicators in the Appendix in describing how the measure was calculated.
KPI Name | Purpose | Data Source | Definition | Calculation |
% Urgent and | Value to Patients and | Clinical Assessment System (CAS) | % of emergency and urgent | (The number of calls referred to |
111 Calls Requiring | Measure Value to NHS | Pathways | Proportion of symptomatic | 999 + A&E + PCS urgent ÷ |
2. The proportions of calls where an ambulance is dispatched, and where the caller is referred to A&E, are calculated out of the number of calls triaged. The total number of calls offered includes calls which are answered but not triaged (such as callers following up previous calls, or seeking contact details for specific health services, or not wanting or not able to give details about the specific health condition, or where the patient recovers); along with calls which are abandoned before being answered.
3. Both NHS Direct and NHS 111 percentages in this answer are calculated as proportions of all calls with clinical dispositions, or in other words, all calls that are triaged.