Todays Daily Mail highlights a case of a child dying because the NHS 111 system failed.
// The call made by William’s mother was found to have been poorly dealt with by the call adviser, who would have had just a few weeks of training.
He was deemed to have been hurried at times, ‘interrupting on occasion’ and failing to notice that William’s mother was describing abnormal symptoms such as the limpness in his arms and the fact he was staring into space.
The call handler also failed to realise the significance of William’s loud crying in the background.
The computer programme ‘did not cover’ this nor the drop in body temperature from very high to low, which is an indicator of sepsis.
Disturbingly, the report found that even when operating properly, the 111 system would not pick up William’s illness.
For us it is a debilitating life sentence that we re-live every day
This failing was identified as a root cause of William’s death in the initial ambulance service report.
That report said the tick-box style system, called NHS Pathways, ‘does not appear to be sensitive to a number of key factors … specifically, the deteriorating signs and symptoms of the paediatric patient, the assessment on pain, and sepsis red flags’.
NHS England now plans to issue warnings to health chiefs to act over the dangerous flaws in the 111 system. //
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3416346/Bombshell-report-condemns-NHS-hours-service-not-safe-sick-children-blunders-cost-baby-life.html#ixzz3yKvIUFYP