Evaluation of NHS 111 online
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of the impact of online NHS 111 on the NHS 111 telephone service and urgent care system.
IRAS ID
258294
Contact name
Janette Turner
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sheffield
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 30 days
Research summary
The NHS 111 telephone service is being used increasingly by people who need help deciding which urgent care services to use when they need help quickly. An alternative online NHS 111 service has recently been introduced to help to reduce the demand for the NHS 111 telephone service and improve patient access to services in England.
We have been funded to do some research looking at how well the new online service is working and what impact it has on the existing NHS 111 telephone service. We will do this via five separate research activities. We will:
1) Review current published evidence on telephone and online urgent care access to services.
2) Use statistical analysis to measure whether there has been a shift in number of calls to the 111 telephone service, using 4 years’ worth of data from 9 sites. We will also estimate likely future demand for each service.
3) Use routinely collected data to look at what happens to people who use NHS 111 and see whether there are differences in how people use the online and telephone services. We will do a survey and more detailed interviews with people who have used the service to understand how they felt about how the service worked, how easy it was to use and how they may use other health services in future.
4) Interview staff in 5 sites to understand how the new online service affects their workload and whether it has had any impact on the people who work at the NHS 111 telephone service.
5) Estimate the costs of the new online service.
We hope to identify where online NHS 111 works well and whether changes are needed to improve the advice provided to people who use it to make it easier to access and use.REC name
North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NW/0361
Date of REC Opinion
17 Jun 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion