More than 125,000 calls were made to the new NHS urgent number across the 12 pilot sites in October 2012.
This is up from 92,578 calls made to the 111 service the previous month.
Assuming the number of calls is typical of national behaviour – this would represent 11.3m calls per year across England to the NHS 111 service.
NHS 111 data released by the Department of Health shows 97% of calls made to the urgent line were answered within 60 seconds. And 2% of calls were abandoned after waiting longer than 30 seconds – up from 1% in September.
Clinical staff at the 12 pilots sites including County Durham and Darlington, Croydon, Hertfordshire and Great Yarmouth and Waveney handled 29% of call time for all NHS 111 calls up to and including October.
Data shows the average length of a call episode for data up to and including October 2012 was 9 minutes 10 seconds, with 78% of callers receiving a triage and 3% of answered calls called back.
During the period April 2011 to March 2012, 92% of callers reported they were “very or fairly satisfied” with their NHS111 experience.
