1. CURRENT ISSUES
1.6 NHS Direct and NHS Professionals
1.6.1 Could the Department provide us
with the results of any research carried out into the cost effectiveness
of NHS Direct and NHS Professionals?
1. The National Audit Office have found
that half of the callers to NHS Direct are directed to forms of
care that they would not have chosen themselves and are more appropriate
to their needs. This tends to be at a level of less urgent care
with lower costs of intervention, eg Home Care. NHS Direct's intervention
with callers saves approximately half of NHS Direct's running
costs.
2. The Department has not commissioned any
specific research into the cost-effectiveness of NHS Professionals.
The Audit Commission Report "Brief Encounters: Getting the
best from temporary nursing" published in September 2001,
supported the basic principle of NHS Professionals that it would
be an effective means of tackling the rising costs of temporary
nurse staffing. There have been reviews by some of the pilot sites
of the effectiveness of the services they have provided (for example
annual reports by the Oxford consortium) and the London project
are nearing completion of a review, but neither of these would
constitute research in the accepted sense. Ministers announced
earlier this year, their decision to create a new Special Health
Authority for NHS Professionals. The new Authority will be expected
to demonstrate that it is providing a service that meets all the
aspirations of NHS Professionals, including cost effectiveness,
at a cost that is acceptable to NHS Trusts, and that also covers
the costs to the Authority of providing the service.
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