About Us

NHS Direct

Forward by Anthony Nicholls
(Regional Head of Business Development)

Committed to providing the people of England, with expert health advice and information, or access appropriate healthcare using world class telephone, website and digital TV services

NHS Direct is a multi-channel service which provides information and advice about health, illness and health services to help patients make better decisions about their health and that of their families.

Our business plan for the next three years aims to support patients through strategic objectives which include:

• To deliver high quality services which are safe, fair, responsive to need and clinically effective.
• To increase the contribution made to the delivery of local health and social care objectives through the provision of a range of enhanced services to support both primary and secondary care.
• To develop services in line with the opportunities offered by the 'Our health, Our care, Our say' White Paper for reshaping access to health and social care, including the launch of Health Direct.
• To deliver significant improvements in productivity and unit costs.

• To improve access to NHS Direct through all channels and position NHS Direct as THE digital portal for health information.

Supporting Patients with Long Term Conditions

NHS Direct’s expertise in the delivery of telephone-based services and new-media channels can bring added value to the services provided to support patients and carers living with long-term conditions.

The OwnHealth® Long Term Conditions Programme is a partnership between Primary Care Trusts, Pfizer Health Solutions and NHS Direct, to deliver proactive telephone-based healthcare support – “Care Management” – to individuals with long-term conditions. The service supports people with cardiovascular disease, heart failure and diabetes to take a more active and informed role in managing their own health.

Within 30 days of patients receiving care management, positive changes have been seen in their health behaviours across diet, exercise and medicine compliance. There are consistently high levels of satisfaction reported from patients and professionals involved in the service.

There is an ongoing rigorous evaluation of OwnHealth® and reports indicate significant improvements in enrolled patients' self efficacy, health behaviours and improvement in clinical indicators such as cholesterol and HbA1c levels.