This investigation by two undercover reporters in Bristol and Dorking highlighted everything that was going wrong at  NHS 111.

 

-I remember once we sent out an ambulance for a cat scratch.

 

This medical center in southeast London has 20,000 patients.The service lasted just a couple of days here in March before buckling.

 

-They couldn't manage the volume of the calls, the time to answer. calls were long. The process that patients have to go through till they get an answer from the system is very protracted. A lot of patients gave up before they even got to that stage. The commissioners of the service locally realized the service was potentially dangerous and pulledit very quickly.

 

It's emerged that officially evaluation of the NHS pilot scheme had not been published before the contracts were signed. NHS Direct base the entire operation on pilots where they expected to earn 13 pounds a call. In fact they brought in between 7 and 9 pounds a call, leaving a huge shortfall. In addition each call took twice as long as expected. Critics argue that replacing nurses with computers was destined to end badly.

 

-It has all got too complicated, and I think the simple thing is to go back the system that was nurse-led. Under NHS Direct nurses used to handle around 60-70% of the calls. That's gonna write down to about 20% and in the end you get what you paid for. And that's basically the service we’ve got at the moment. 

 

Some still believe that while far from perfect, the system has a future.

 

-People need to understand that we are not complacent about this, this was a real issue and things are much improved but we can do better and we will do better, and we will be continuously looking at ways that we can improve this service.

 

-Do you think I should chat to a clinician or just do it? 

 

-We haven't got the clinicians to spare.

 

The immediate challenge now is to find someone to take on the contracts NHS Direct is pulling out of. Restoring confidence may prove even harder.