DORSET’S NHS 111 services are suffering because of increasing local demand and taking on calls from other areas when they are stretched.

Since 2019 calls to the service within the county have increased by 64% which has resulted in poorer performance rates with the speed of answering calls down and more calls being abandoned.

Although more staff have been recruited in the county workloads have continued to increase with a study now underway to try and work out how best to meet demand and by what level call services may need to be increased by.

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A report to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole health and adult social care overview committee next week (25) says that because of a national agreement where the Dorset service has to help other authorities when they are in danger of being over-loaded there is a knock-on for local performance.

“Due to demand increasing across the country there are other providers calling on National Contingency which means Dorset take a proportion of calls out of area which can then have a knock-on effect to performance. The percentage of calls depends on each individual situation but can be up to 100% of calls at one time divided up amongst the better performing providers at that time,” said a report to councillors. It adds that sickness and Covid outbreaks have also been affecting local performance, although Dorset is still doing better than many other areas.

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The report also says that for some shifts there has been a shortage of staff and recruitment into clinical assessment roles has been difficult.

Future developments include all areas having a new telephony system to enable calls to be switched from across providers within a region. Under the system Dorset calls would normally be dealt with in the county but if the caller has been waiting over a set time limit the call will automatically be re-routed to another South West NHS 111 service where there is a call handler free.

A verbal report will be given to the meeting on Monday July 25th, to update the current position.