After many months of careful monitoring and work to improve the private contractor’s performance, Wiltshire’s 24-hour urgent care helpline finally went live as a “full service” on Monday (October 28.)
In an interview earlier this month with Marlborough News Online, the Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Chairman, Dr Steve Rowlands, forecast that the service would soon be up to the standards required for it to go live. And within his forecast time-frame, it has now been given the green light to take over fully from NHS Direct.
Wiltshire NHS 111 was supposed to go live in April. But as with many local contracts under the coalition government’s scheme to find a cheaper replacement for NHS Direct, it has had problems.
The private company which won the Wiltshire contract, Harmoni, were not meeting the required levels of service.
A week ago, the national panel overseeing the implementation of the NHS 111 service across England, agreed with the CCG’s recommendation that it could become a “full service” for Wiltshire.
Debbie Fielding, Chief Officer, NHS Wiltshire CCG said: “Working closely with us, Harmoni has shown a steady and sustained improvement in performance over the summer, giving Commissioners confidence that it is providing a safe and effective service to our communities.”
“We initially had experienced some difficulty with the delivery of this service, but I am pleased that after significant hard work and endeavour by both Harmoni and Commissioners, we have reached this important milestone.”
As part of the contractual obligations, performance will be monitored and managed routinely to ensure that the service provided continues to be of a safe and effective standard.
NHS Direct has handed back the eleven NHS 111 contracts it had won because it found they were ‘financially unsustainable’. NHS Direct has since announced that it will cease all operations at the end of this financial year in March 2014.
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