Observational studyBMJ open2015
Potential for advice from doctors to reduce the number of patients referred to emergency departments by NHS 111 call handlers: observational study.
Observational study in BMJ open, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Do callers to out-of-hours care misuse an option to jump the phone queue?Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2019Trial
- Giving callers the option to bypass the telephone waiting line in out-of-hours services: a comparative intervention study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2019Trial
- Student Perspectives on Integrating an Oral Health Helpline Service Into Dental and Dental Hygiene Education.European journal of dental education : official journal of the Association for Dental Education in Europe · 2026Article
- Clinical advisors at NHS 111 improve accuracy for paediatric patients and their advice is more reliably followed: a retrospective observational cohort study.Archives of disease in childhood · 2026Observational
- Request-response characteristics and public satisfaction with using a health hotline.Frontiers in digital health · 2026Article
- Safety and accuracy of digitally supported primary and secondary urgent care telephone triage in England: an observational study using routine data.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2025Observational
- Identifying performance indicators to measure overall performance of telephone triage - a scoping review.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2024Article
- An analysis of NHS 111 demand for primary care services: A retrospective cohort study.PloS one · 2024Article
- What impact would reducing low-acuity attendance have on emergency department length of stay? A discrete event simulation modelling study.Emergency medicine journal : EMJ · 2023Article
- Medical advice lines offering on-demand access to providers reduced emergency department visits.Health affairs scholar · 2023Article
- Emergency department staff views of NHS 111 First: qualitative interview study in England.Emergency medicine journal : EMJ · 2023Article
- Clinician-led secondary triage in England's urgent care delivery: a cross-sectional study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2023Article
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- Factors associated with undertriage in patients classified by the need to visit a hospital by telephone triage: a retrospective cohort study.BMC emergency medicine · 2021Article
- Patient compliance with NHS 111 advice: Analysis of adult call and ED attendance data 2013-2017.PloS one · 2021Article
- The influence of personal communities in understanding avoidable emergency department attendance: qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2020Article
- An evaluation of 1 year of advice calls to a tropical and infectious disease referral Centre.Clinical medicine (London, England) · 2020Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo determine the effect of using experienced general practitioners (GPs) to review the advice given by call handlers in NHS 111, a national service giving telephone advice to people seeking medical care.
designObservational study following the introduction of GPs to review call handlers' decisions which had been made using decision support software.
settingNHS 111 call centre covering Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
interventionWhen a call handler using standard NHS 111 decision support software would have advised the caller to attend the hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department, the decision was reviewed by an experienced GP.
main outcome measuresPercentage of calls where an outcome other than A&E attendance was recommended by the GP.
resultsOf 1474 cases reviewed, the GP recommended A&E attendance in 400 cases (27.1%). In the remainder of cases, the GP recommended attendance at a primary care out-of-hours centre or minor injury unit in 665 cases (45.2%) and self-management or some alternative strategy in 409 (27.8%).
conclusionsFewer callers to NHS 111 would be sent to emergency departments if the decision was reviewed by an experienced GP. Telephone triage services need to consider whether using relatively unskilled call handlers supported by computer software is the most cost-effective way to handle requests for medical care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.