Around 3.7 million calls to NHS 111 were dropped last year amid long waits to get through, according to new analysis.
Almost one in five callers – or 18 per cent – gave up before speaking to anyone, with the average time taken to answer a call stretching to 25 minutes in December, research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows. The party’s leader Sir Ed Davey said it is “completely unacceptable” that people needing medical advice struggled to get through to the helpline.
He will call for an emergency recruitment drive of NHS 111 call handlers on a visit on Tuesday (April 11) to Surrey in the South East, the region with the worst NHS 111 delays in the country – with one in two callers giving up in December. It comes as junior doctors across England on Tuesday launch a four-day strike in a worsening dispute over pay which threatens huge disruption to the NHS.
