MORE than 40,000 calls to 111 in Dorset were abandoned by people waiting to be connected to the service over the course of a 12-month period.

Latest available figures from NHS Dorset showed that for May the average wait a caller made before hanging up was 235.4 seconds.

The target for 111 is to answer calls within 60 seconds but the county’s service, which is run by Dorset HealthCare, took an average of 107.3 seconds, according to the most recent data.

Emma Wilson, NHS Dorset integrated care board’s head of urgent and emergency care, said abandoned calls were not what health bosses wanted to happen.

Data she presented to BCP Council health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee meeting showed 41,615 calls were abandoned between June 2021 and May this year.

Ms Wilson said: “As soon as somebody abandons the call that doesn’t mean there problem has gone away.

“They will either go to the place of least resistant, which is the ED which is what we don’t want to happen, or they might get more poorly and not bother to phone anybody and that is what we don’t want either, so we are doing our utmost to get that abandonment call down as much as we can.”

The committee heard between November 2021 and January the clinical assessment service in Dorset 111 had led to a potential of 7,425 potential ambulance dispatchments resulting in only 440 cases where an ambulance was sent to the incident.

Ms Wilson said this showed how important it was to have the validation process for 111 calls through clinician assessments.

The health leader explained that Dorset 111 does not often rely on the national contingency programme, where 111 call handlers in other parts of the country answer calls.

However, the county’s service does end up answering calls from outside the area due to other providers facing demand they cannot cope with. The committee heard this could have a knock-on affect on Dorset’s own 111 performance.

Staff sickness due to Covid and recruitment to clinical roles was also said to be a current challenge. Urgent treatment centre and minor injury unit staff were being drafted in to answer the clinical assessment calls.

The overall increase in calls was down to the increased public communication on ringing 111 first, along with GPs being under increased pressure, Ms Wilson told the committee.