CONCERNS have been raised about the pressure on health service helpline NHS 24, including a warning that staff are sometimes so short of time it affects the way they speak to patients.

 

Professor George Crooks, medical director of NHS 24 - which handles all calls to GPs after surgery hours, said there are signs the service is under such strain it may not be able to cope in the long term.

Details of the problem have emerged at a time when hospitals are struggling to cope with the number of patients who need beds and GPs have been dealing with high levels of flu.

According to board papers, NHS 24 struggled to recruit the number of frontline staff they wanted to advise patients - particularly nurses - in the run up to this winter. The call centres were short of 33 clinical frontline staff by the end of the year- meaning almost 10 per cent of posts were unfilled.

Sickness absence has also been increasing since last March and an investigation has been launched into the problem.

The staffing shortages are being felt at a time when the number of calls is up by an average of 20 per cent following the launch of a free, easy-to-remember telephone number: 111.

The introduction of new technology, which it was hoped would make the service more efficient, has also been delayed for more than a year after running into problems and the bill for this project has almost doubled from the original estimate to £52.6m.

According to the minutes of a meeting, which were presented to the NHS 24 board, Professor Crooks said that, while NHS 24 is still safe and effective, there have been "soft signs... which indicate that the service and staff were at times under pressure which was not sustainable in the longer term."

Asked for evidence of this Professor Crooks made a series of points. He said that "staff rapport with patients may at times suffer due to time restraints" and that reviews of the way calls had been handled has "indicated that staff attitude may also suffer due to pressure". He also indicated the quality of the records kept by staff may reduce if they are short of time.

Scottish Labour Health spokeswoman Jenny Marra said the Scottish Government needed to get on top of the problem.

She said: "It is now clear that the SNP A&E crisis is not the only pressure point our NHS faces.

"In the past few weeks we have seen a number of experts voicing their serious concerns about the growing strain on a range of NHS services.

"This time it is our NHS 24 services under the spotlight, with a medical director telling the board that staff are under too much pressure

"It is of particular concern that NHS 24 cannot fill 10 per cent of frontline vacancies. This means that patients are being let down while the pressure on existing staff ramps up."

NHS 24 chief executive John Turner has commissioned a review to get a better understanding of the issues affecting the recruitment and retention or clinical staff. The possibility of a trial where NHS 24 nurse advisers work from home has also been discussed. The service is meeting targets for the time it takes to respond to callers.

In a statement released on behalf of NHS 24, Professor Crooks said: "We can absolutely assure the safety and effectiveness of NHS 24 services to the patients who call us. NHS 24 staff perform a high quality role in delivering support to thousands of patients every day and have continued to do so since the introduction of 111 in April 2014, following which we have seen an average increase of 20 per cent in call volumes.

"Staff delivered a strong performance during the recent festive period when we safely managed more than 75,000 calls. We continuously monitor the performance of the service and our staff and review our processes and the support we give to our staff appropriately." He stressed patients should not hesitate to ring if they needed support.