Over 7,000 calls to the NoWDOC GP Out of Hours Service last month

Some 7,211 calls were received by the NoWDOC (out of hours GP) service in the month of December 2017, reflecting an increase of 3% on the same period in 2016.

Approximately 70% of all calls received a GP consultation and/or treatment in one of our centres or at home, whereas the remaining 30% received nursing advice. As predicted, the recent Christmas/New Year holiday period proved to be an extremely busy period for the service as it received and dealt with 4,070 calls between December 22nd 2017 and January 1st 2018.

The NoWDOC service, which is a partnership between the GP members of Caredoc and the HSE, provides an urgent GP family Doctor service to patients of GP members in Co Donegal and south Leitrim.

The service is designed to provide urgent GP care to patients and is not a substitute for the Emergency Ambulance Service, who are the appropriate service to deal with medical emergencies where they arise. All calls received in our call centre, (which is contacted via the 1850 400 911 number), are initially assessed by trained and qualified Nursing clinicians, using bespoke nursing triage software.

On completion of the nursing triage process, a clinical decision will be made regarding the appropriate level of care, as patients can be seen by a GP in one of our main treatment centres, located at Letterkenny, Carndonagh, Mountcharles, Derrybeg and Carrick-on-Shannon.

All consultations in the NoWDOC service are by appointment only, and the location of the centre which the patient will attend, is agreed in advance, with the patient, during the process.

HSE Management at NoWDOC GP out of Hours Service would like to sincerely thank all of our GP’s and staff members for the excellent dedicated service provided over the 2017 Christmas and subsequent New Year holiday period.

The NoWDOC number is 1850 400 911.