EmailNick Chapman said that pilots carried out by NHS Direct have shown that as well as being cost effective, remote working could help reduce staff turnover. He did not rule out the possibility of closing customer contact centres when the measures are introduced later this year.
"We have an overall turnover of over a quarter of our staff leaving in their first year, and actually that means huge expenses and a huge trade off in quality terms because you're continually having people who are climbing up the experience curve," he told the Smart Healthcare Live conference in London on 15 June 2010. "So we think that home working is likely to be a real win for us."
Chapman cited an equivalent service run by McKesson in Australia and New Zealand as an example of successful remote working. He said it has a waiting list of staff willing to work remotely and that the service has "no turnover."
"The technology is now well able to support somebody sitting in the comfort in their own home as if they were working in a call centre environment," he added.
Chapman said there was much potential for more remotely delivered care within the NHS, but added that there was a cultural barrier from professionals. "I feel I can say these things because I've worked for the NHS for 30 years. The NHS regards remotely delivered care as inherently and by definition second rate, cheap and nasty and potentially unsafe."
But he said that NHS Direct plans to add more automation to its service, by encouraging more patients to look online before they call. "What we want to do is get people to look on the web first. A large number of people are actually very comfortable with going onto the internet and looking for services."
He added: "There are a lot of people who now are their own banker, they are their own travel agent, because that's the way they expect to do business and we want to encourage that."
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