Quarter of health calls get no reply

Almost a quarter of calls to the Healthline telephone advice service are going unanswered, according to the Ministry of Health.

In April, the Government dumped the PlunketLine child advice service in favour of McKesson's Healthline, which it said already had a proven record of answering 90 per cent of calls.

PlunketLine's call response rate was poor, it said.

A petition presented to Parliament calling for the reinstatement of PlunketLine collected 53,000 signatures in five weeks. The board of Plunket said it would continue to fund PlunketLine until the end of the year.

Callers with concerns about their young children now dial up the Healthline 0800 number and are transferred to a specialist Well Child nurse or a registered nurse with Well Child experience.

Between July 1, when the contract began, and the first week of August, the ministry said Healthline answered 27,192 calls, about 25 per cent of them related to children under five.

However, the average unanswered call rate to Healthline was 24.1 per cent during that time, said ministry spokesman Pat Tuohy.

The ministry and the company were concerned about the unanswered call rate, he said, which was the result of increased demand because of winter illnesses and the success of the initial campaign advertising Healthline.

Strategies were in place to boost staffing levels to meet demand, Dr Tuohy said.

McKesson said it was on target with its agreement to ensure that all Well Child calls were handled by Well Child nurses by the beginning of October. McKesson now employs nine Well Child qualified nurses, and another nurse is due to start next week.

Meanwhile, Plunket chief executive Paul Baigent said the organisation was as busy as ever taking calls from concerned parents. In the past week it had received 1376 calls, and referred 171 of those to Healthline.

- NZPA