Life support turned off: NHS Direct dies silent, undignified death NHS Direct is dead and England's health service was hoping few people would notice that it had moved the kill date forward five days for its "financially unsustainable" advice website. The 15-year-old service was supposed to limp on until the end of this month, but the NHS pulled the plug early. As of Wednesday morning, …
If you really want to wind up a doc, tell him that you've been researching your symptoms on USA medical websites! (Especially, the "alternative" ones).
I guess we now find out hw many extra visits GPs have to handle because people can't just get the info they need off the web. (Well, they still can, but not from the NHS, and most of the rest is intended to encourage you to visit your doctor in countries where you have to pay to see your doctor)
having just glanced at the webMD site, it looks mostly like a magazine trying to sell me stuff; rather than a reputable online or phone-based heathcare service aimed at helping the general public. Maybe this is an misleading impression, but it's one that rather concerns me; I suppose it mostly relates to webMD being a commercial operation (I assume) rather than a public service.
Well, I just glanced at the WebMD website (partnered by Boots...draw your own conclusions)
and on particular aspect (that I am qualified to express an opinion on) of a subject, the WebMD site is misleading and inferior to the NHS Choices text. Fortunately its not an aspect that affects patient health, but only their understanding.
It was founded by a computer scientist, not a doctor. It is not governed by doctors and no doctor has vouched for its content.
It has apparently been accredited by some healthcare organization, but the credibility of said accreditation is in doubt.
In short, WebMD is certainly a good idea, and probably contains reliable information for many cases, but I wouldn't trust my cancer diagnostic to it, much less my treatment (not that I have cancer, that's just an example).
Get WebMD under the wing of a truly certified medical body and then we can start using it in confidence. Until then, I'll just keep using it for general queries.
Oh, and just for the principle of it I will certainly not create a medical profile on a US site.
DH did studies to look at the effect on Emergency Department attendance as a result of putting in NHS Direct.
It doesn't prevent people coming at all and if anything NHSD just trained patients to come straight to the hospitals because that is where the doctors are - they don't get dicked around on a phone for 2 hours and then told to come to hospital anyway.
http://www.collemergencymed.ac.uk/photos/EIEDattendances1987-2013.png
When people are ill, they want someone else to take responsibility for managing their condition - they don't really want advice, and if they did then they have wikipedia. But most of the time people just think "I don't get a website to manage my plumbing, I get a plumber - someone who actually knows what they are talking about" why would your illness be any different?
So I am afraid you wasted 6 years of your life. sorry. that is why they shut it - it is expensive and it doesn't work. Now we have 111 which is cheaper and guess what? it doesn't work either.
I have to disagree - not that I know who DH is, but I can't see how it could possibly fail to reduce numbers attending whatever an "Emergency Department" is (isn't it called A&E? Emergency Department sounds American). People generally don't know how to ask the right questions or draw the right conclusions from the answers they get - and other people want you to draw a specific conclusion so represent results in a way that favour their opinion.
Maybe NHS Direct was indented to reduce calls to GPs - not the same as reducing visits to A&E.
Aren't you generalising by saying "Hospitals - that's where the doctors are" - I'd guess there are more GPs in local surgeries where I live than in the local hospital.
When I;m ill I don't want someone to take responsibility - I want to know what's wrong with me, and how to fix it - so yes, I really want advice...and a doctor could give me that, but so could a website.
I agree that I don't get a website to manage my plumbing - but I get a website to help me work out where the problem is, and another to order the parts, and then I fix it myself - I have never used a plumber and I'm 46.
...I rarely go to the hospital too, and that's partly because I get dicked around whether I go to hospital or go to the GP - and advice sites such as NHS Direct (and the phone lines) were useful in avoiding unnecessary visits.
What's a real tragedy is that the system is up, the costs of leaving it there must be minimal - all that investment pissed away. ...now there's a common problem that really needs looking into.
111 justs asked a lot of questions before wanting to send an ambulance out. Last year I broke a tooth so rang to get hold of an emergency dentist. I had to formally decline, against their advice, the ambulance they wanted to send to take me to A&E because I had sustained a head injury.
Doctors always seem to roll their eyes if you say you have looked out symptoms on such a website, either the NHS one or any others, and yet to be honest, pretty much every time the self diagnosis has been correct and I cant count how many times the GP has got a book on symptoms out and checked, not much difference between him checking a book and me checking a website. For all the run of the mill issues, a GP may as well just sign a prescription after you tell him what you have already diagnosed you have. For more complicated issues and edge cases, sure it makes sense he checks you, but most of these edge cases are only found after the most likely treatment has been tried and you have gone back a second time anyway.
The NHS direct phone service was MUCH better than 111. The two times I've called 111, they spent 15 minutes asking me to spell my address and tell them who my GP is etc etc etc before even asking why I was calling. They then went through what was very obviously a script the computer was prompting them to do and appeared to have zero medical knowledge (despite apparently being "staffed by nurses"). Now we just call the out of hours GP directly instead who will do a telephone consultation in half the time.
However, BOTH websites are/were useless. The online symptom checker seems to have one answer whatever you do which is "call your GP" (unless you tell it something like you accidentally cut your own head off in which case it says dial 999).
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