Chamber and committees

In August 2007, NHS 24 set up an online inquiry service for people seeking health information advice. The numbers of emails received each month are set out in the following table:

Month	Emails
August 2007	108
September 2007	131
October 2007	185
November 2007	185
December 2007	156
January 2008	206
February 2008	227
March 2008	277

 

As part of the continued development of their online service, NHS 24 has recently introduced a facility to enable people to respond to NHS 24 via the feedback form on www.nhs24.com. The monitoring of the number of emails received through this channel began in January 2008 and figures are detailed in the following table:

Month	Emails
January 2008	83
February 2008	90
March 2008	80
April 2008	78
May 2008	64

 

The average response time to emails is 1.8 days for online enquiries and 0.9 days for website feedback.

Complaints to NHS 24 are not routinely received directly via email and are not recorded separately from other complaints. Email complaints are accepted, but would require postal address details to allow the complaint to be processed in line with NHS 24 security protocols. A complaint received via email would be managed within the standard complaints procedure and would be acknowledged in writing within three working days. A full response should be given within 20 working days.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-14264 on 24 June 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

Visits to www.nhs24.com have only been recorded by NHS 24 since November 2006. The monthly breakdown since then is set out in the following table.

Month	Website Visits
November 2006	23,447
December 2006	27,176
January 2007	45,784
February 2007	30,887
March 2007	32,399
April 2007	33,390
May 2007	36,917
June 2007	33,852
July 2007	36,234
August 2007	32,272
September 2007	29,091
October 2007	39,423
November 2007	43,009
December 2007	41,094
January 2008	59,698
February 2008	50,285
March 2008	62,724
April 2008	62,899
May 2008	51,589

Note: *Information provided by NHS 24.

NHS 24 have provided the requested information and this is set out in the following table. All of these staff are employed on permanent contracts.

	Total	Full-Time	Part-Time
Call Handlers	515	107	408
Nurse Adviser (Bands 5 and 6)	341	66	275
Pharmacist	19	3	16
Dental Nurse	9	1	8
Health Information Adviser*	56	13	43

Note: *Includes Breathing Space advisers

The initial costs of establishing NHS24.com were not recorded separately by NHS 24 as they were included within a number of infrastructure and application developments.

However, as part of an on-going process to improve public accessibility to NHS 24 services, the website was redesigned in 2007 at a cost of £36,687.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-14397 on 7 July 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

This information is not recorded by month. However, the annual maintenance cost of the website for 2007-08 was £7,200. This covers technical support, server and database monitoring, uploads, creation/modification of page designs including images and the development of content management.

Establishment and running costs for NHS 24 are not recorded by location. However, details of the net operating costs, or running costs, of NHS 24 are set out in its annual accounts each year and laid before the Parliament.

NHS 24 operates four regional centres and the numbers of staff based in each centre, as of 1 May 2008, were:

Riverside House, Aberdeen	148 Staff
West of Scotland, Clydebank	319 Staff
Glasgow and Clyde, Cardonald	258 Staff
Norseman House, South Queensferry	341 Staff

 

In addition, 172 staff were based in five local centres across Scotland.

NHS 24 is working well in partnership with its workforce to support employee wellbeing and has several work streams in place aimed at promoting attendance and managing sickness absence. The target for most health boards was to achieve a sickness absence rate of 4% by March 2008, but the agreed target for NHS 24 was actually 6%, in recognition of a particularly challenging set of circumstances affecting that particular board. NHS 24 has clearly explained to the Scottish Government the plans it has in place to make sustained progress in reducing its absence rates.

The yearly average absence rate for NHS 24 at March 2008 was 9.06%, a year earlier the same measure showed a rate of 9.88%. The monthly rate for March 2008 was 9.3% and the corresponding rate for March 2007 was 10.7%.