Is NHS 111 making Emergency Department overcrowding worse?

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By Michael Marshall

As 'corridor care' becomes routine in hospitals across the UK, Doctors.net.uk examines whether the telephone triage service is truly part of the problem, as many emergency medics fear.

In hospitals across the UK, emergency patients are being treated in hallways and other unsafe places. This “corridor care” crisis is harming both patients and healthcare professionals: the Royal College of Nursing quoted one nurse saying that corridor care amounted to “a type of torture” for patients, while emergency medics have been left distraught as they scrabble to cope with unprecedented levels of demand.

Some emergency departments are seeing more than 150 extra patients each day than they were designed to accommodate, and even as more and more departments have resorted to declaring critical incidents, they question whether such measures make any real difference.

Amid this worsening crisis, many NHS staff have expressed concern that the NHS 111 service may be part of the problem, making matters worse by sending too many people to emergency departments. We look to the evidence to see what is actually ramping up the pressure on emergency departments – and what role 111 really plays.