News
NHS 111 - Implementation, Procurement and Governance (added 21/02/12)
The BMA's General Practitioner's Committee (GPC) supports the principle of developing an easily accessible national telephone number for patients who have urgent health problems, as proposed by the new NHS 111 system which has recently been piloted. We are however extremely concerned that the new NHS 111 service is being rolled out without full, truly independent and thorough evaluation of pilots and without adequate input from local clinicians. For more information see
http://www.bma.org.uk/healthcare_policy/nhs111letter.jsp#.T0N0pIdOhjc
A comprehensive NHS 111 service is currently expected from April 2013. The GPC has written to the Secretary of State for Health, calling on the Government to slow procurement of NHS 111 services to allow for proper evaluation of the pilots, and to adopt a flexible deadline for full implementation of the service to ensure that fledgling clinical commissioning groups can become fully established and ready to drive local procurement decisions at a pace that will ensure that the right decisions are reached.
