There were more than 240,000 calls to 111 in December, new Department of Health (DH) statistics show.
The service is only available in 15 areas, but the government estimates this would represent 19.2 million calls across England per year.
The figures released today (1 February 2013) show that only 19% of people were transferred to the service.
The other 81% directly called the non-urgent emergency help number.
Less than a third of call time was handled by a doctor or nurse.
In December, 89% of calls to NHS111 were answered within 60 seconds and 5% were abandoned after longer than 30 seconds of waiting.
The government hopes that creating NHS111 would slash the health budget by phasing out NHS Direct, which costs £123 million per year.
It is expected that NHS111 will be rolled out across England later this year.
