NHS Direct calls cost taxpayer more than visits to GP

Each call to NHS Direct, the 24-hour helpline launched to ease the burden on the health service, costs the taxpayer about 25 per cent more than a visit to the doctor.

Official figures have revealed that the average cost of each call to NHS Direct was almost £18 last year – £4 more than the estimated £14 cost of each visit to a GP.

The revelation has provoked calls from the Conservatives for a full review of the service, which was launched in a blaze of publicity to take pressure off GPs and hospitals' accident and emergency units by giving advice over the telephone.

The Liberal Democrats also criticised the low-cost helpline, warning that four out of five of the 1,150 nurses working for NHS Direct had moved from jobs elsewhere in the health service. NHS Direct has faced repeated criticism since it began four years ago amid fears that experienced nurses are leaving vital hospital posts empty to join the telephone and internet helpline.

Figures produced earlier this month show that almost one in five people who call the 24-hour service has to wait more than half an hour to speak to a nurse. There have also been suggestions that the service, contrary to its goal, has contributed to a rise in GPs' call-outs as well as to demand at hospitals' accident and emergency departments.

Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrats health spokesman, who launches a week of campaigning on the health service today, said: "The NHS is a very expensive service, at a time when the National Health Service has very limited capacity. So far there is no evidence to show that NHS Direct is relieving pressure on other parts of the health service. In fact, it has made life more difficult for struggling A&E departments."

Yesterday, Dr Liam Fox, the Tories' health spokesman, warned that some A&E departments in London were losing large numbers of staff to the service. "We always said we would wait to see how it would work in practice. There was no theoretical reason why it would be a bad thing but it is quite clear in practice it has not remotely met the targets it was set at the beginning," he said.

"They need to have a full and rigorous audit of what is actually going on to see whether staff could be better employed to help patients. The average wait to speak to nurses is now increasing and questions must therefore be raised about whether this is the best way to get value for money."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said the cost of the 0845 helpline would fall as the number of callers increased. "The average cost of a call to NHS Direct in 2001-02 was about £17.92, although this is expected to fall significantly in the future as call volumes rise," the spokeswoman said.

"The National Audit Office have found that half of callers are directed to forms of care that they would not have chosen and this tends to be care of a lower level and cost of intervention. More than half of NHS Direct costs are saved in this way," she said.

¿ Patients are waiting "longer and longer" to see a GP, Dr Fox said, after a Department of Health survey showed a fall in the number of practices offering swift appointments. The percentage meeting a target of 48 hours for appointments fell from 80 per cent last September to 78 per cent in December and 75 per cent by March.