Emergency department attendance by callers to NHS111 who end the call prior to triage: A time-to-event-analysis

Richard Pilbery, Jen Lewis and Rebecca Simpson

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 4, 1-8

Abstract: Background: The English National Health Service (NHS) 111 telephone service aims to assist members of the public with urgent medical care needs. However, each year nearly 18% of the 20.6 million calls to NHS 111 are abandoned prior to speaking to a health advisor. There are concerns that callers who are not triaged may not appropriately seek the correct level of care for their needs. Methods: We obtained routine data pertaining to all NHS 111 calls made by adult patients registered with a General Practitioner (GP) in the Bradford region of Yorkshire, England, between the 1st January 2022 and 30th June 2023. Subsequent healthcare access in the 72 hours following each caller’s first (index) call was identified using the Connected Bradford research database. Results: There were 19,056 index non-triaged and 168,609 triaged calls made to NHS 111 by an adult registered with a Bradford GP. A higher proportion of ED attendances in the triaged call cohort were non-avoidable compared with the non-triaged cohort (84.6% compared to 80.0% for triaged calls). In addition, callers in the non-triaged call cohort attended ED later than the triaged call cohort (median 10 vs 8 hours, p

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0346969

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0346969

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