Fears raised over NHS advice line in Shropshire
Fears have been raised that an NHS advice line in Shropshire is putting pressure on the county's ambulance service and hospitals.
It has been revealed that more people are seen by paramedics when they dial the non-emergency 111 number rather than the out-of-hours service Shropdoc.
There are fears the increase could put pressure on the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford and the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital over the winter.
The findings were discussed by Shropshire's Clinical Commissioning Group this week.
Dr Julie Davies, director of performance and delivery at the CCG, said: “We are working with the regional commissioning lead for NHS 111 and the ambulance service to understand what, if any, impact there is on ambulance attendances generated by NHS 111 and are due to report back to the next governing body meeting.”
In a document prepared ahead of the meeting, it said: "The CCG is now receiving data direct from the regional commissioning lead for NHS 111.
"There were 2,710 calls triaged by NHS 111 registered to Shropshire in August 2017.
"Of the triaged calls 36.25 per cent were referred to out of hospital service and 13.66 per cent to the ambulance service. There is some concern about an apparent higher rate of disposition to A&E and the ambulance service from NHS 111 activity which may be having some impact on A&E performance at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust(SaTH).
"Both local CCGS are directly engaged with the regional commissioner to understand what more can be done to mitigate this impact over the winter period."
The meeting also heard about the CCG's performance to date.
The document added: "Cancer performance for the CCG continues to be mixed but SaTH its main provider continues to achieve all targets. The CCGs performance remains affected by out of county providers and this is being progressed through their lead commissioners.
"A&E performance remains challenged and although September was a slight improvement on August it remains significantly behind the recovery trajectory. Demand remains broadly on plan. Levels and timeliness of patient discharges remain the underlying issue, alongside workforce, with limited progress in this area over the last month.
"A system wide action plan to improve complex discharge levels has been agreed in October which should start to impact on this and the resulting A&E performance through October/November and throughout the winter. GP streaming has been introduced at PRH at the end of October and non-admitted performance is now improving after a drop in the first three weeks of October."
