Failures of the 111 Helpline

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I echo the tribute that the noble Lord paid to the Mead family and their recognition that we can only learn from these terrible tragedies. The fact that they are prepared to make available the report to other parts of the NHS will help in that learning process. I, or one of the other Ministers concerned, will certainly undertake to meet the UK Sepsis Trust.

The noble Lord raised the issue of the 111 service. It is worth making the point that, in this case, the call handler took the call and referred it to a GP who was part of the out-of-hours service. The GP then spoke directly to William’s mother and decided on what the right course of action was. However, I take on board exactly what the noble Lord said about training and the mix between clinicians and non-clinicians in 111 call centres. It will become a better service when the out-of-hours service and the 111 service are integrated.

One point that came out of the report was that had there been an electronic patient record indicating the evidence of the time that William had spent with GPs in the preceding six weeks, the GP who took the call might possibly have come to a different decision. This was a tragic case of all the holes in the Swiss cheese lining up to cause this awful tragedy. Therefore, I take on board what the noble Lord said about 111 and will pursue that with NHS England.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about 111, but does this not go much wider? On the issue of medical and public education about sepsis, what are Public Health England and Health Education England going to do about this? We cannot rely on the BBC1 programme “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor”, which this week has certainly increased my understanding of the symptoms of sepsis. But that needs to be spread to the wider public. I recommend that people go on iPlayer and watch that programme if they want to know about this. Does this not also indicate that this very conscientious and determined mother was not listened to? She knew her child was behaving abnormally and all the people who talked to her—from GPs through to everyone else—just did not listen.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the facts of this case demonstrate that a lot of things went wrong. That is the real tragedy of it. Had one of those things not gone wrong, the tragedy may not have happened. The noble Baroness referred in particular to medical education but it is wider than that. As I said, a whole stream of things went wrong and we must learn from that.