NHS Direct Phone & Internet Healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

NHS strike Ph iodin & Internet Healthcare - Essay Example info collection has larger ramifications in this system of healthcare than it might in a traditional or commerce-based system. Apparently, despite the availability of this healthcare, there commit suave been segments of people who have fallen into the cracks and have received less care than others, generally in a higher level of income. A study in the 1970s showed up problems in infant mortality, death rates of mothers in childbirth and a deathrate from tuberculosis that was higher than in the 1930s. In addition, this system of healthcare is subject to the economic decisions of the government from year to year, and is currently being cut back in some areas (Dworkin 1997).The NHS discipline web page, www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk, includes 1) enquiry page, 2) health encyclopaedia, 3) self-help guide, 4) normal health questions, 5) interactive tools, 6) newsletter subscription, 7) directory of physicians and medical practitioners, 8) NHS services link and links in several languages as well as many other accommodative links. It also refers people to their phone line which is available 24 hours a day, which is how NHS Direct first started.In 2005, a newspaper article (Evening Chronicle) stated fears that the Tories would describe the plug on Tynesides call centre if they were elected. The fears were dismissed by the Tories and the Conservatives. The call centre employs about 200 people. The Tories insisted that they rather aim to improve the system. The Tyneside centre was one of the original sites that was begun in 1998. They handle over 30,000 calls a month. Since the system went national, it has handled to a greater extent than 10 million calls. According to Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley (2005) the Conservatives plan to reconfigure NHS Direct with a more integrated emergency care network that will enable doctors out-of-hours services, ambulance trusts, walk-in centres and NHSD to be used as is best for each network, and better local service.The chief(prenominal) point of NHS Direct is to reduce hospital queues (Gibson 1999) by giving people access to medical information. The phone operators and nurses in the call centres are trained to canvas symptoms and offer information on available treatments. Cyber docs and net nurses online (Gibson 1999) offer health advice after the patient types in their symptoms. They, too, can suggest possible medical treatments, if needed. The year that NHS Direct was begun, the National Health Service had 50 years of service yet the UK was still behind other European countries in dealing with health issues such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. So in addition to the internet service, NHS Direct also set up observatories to monitor facts and figures across the country, called the White news report.Question 2 What contributions can the internet make to effective service operations With reference to S. Ghoshs article Making business sense of the internet in the Harvard Business Review of 1998, the same opportunities and threats that traditional businesses face on the internet are also true for a government-run site such as the NHS Direct internet site. Ghosh wrote that setting up a web presence is easy but creating the business model is very difficult (Pandya 1999). Since the inception of the internet, there have been a