Member Article

New medical phoneline rolled out across Derbyshire

Derbyshire Health United are leading the way in out-of-hours care provision, as one of the first providers to use the new NHS 111 initiative.

The Department of Health’s new phoneline service is intended to make access to local healthcare services easier, for fast medical health that does not warrant a 999 call.

Using Advanced Health & Care’s Adastra technology, DHU, have launched the service which will provide a route to urgent care for 1.1million people across Derbyshire.

Patients who call the number have their symptoms assessed by NHS Pathways, a clinical assessment tool that helps to determine care needs, which forms part of the Adastra patient management system.

Pauline Hand, Operations Manager for DHU, said: “We are excited to be one of the first out-of-hours organisations to deliver NHS 111 with Adastra.

“We’ve used Adastra for the past ten years and we have found it to be a high quality solution that is easy to use.

“Choosing Adastra as our NHS 111 host system was the natural next step.”

Callers are prioritised and routed to the most appropriate care based upon the symptoms they report.

They are steered towards a range of care options from self-care through to nurse clinicians, GPs, urgent care centres and accident and emergency departments.

The service will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days-a-year.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .