Healthline calls soar as flu and Covid ramp up

More people are using national telehealth service Healthline than ever before, with call numbers up by 40% on the same time last year.

The nation’s free telehealth service is asking people to take their winter illnesses seriously and practise self-care before, or as well as, calling in – but says it is meeting demand with increased staff.

‘‘If you are feeling unwell stop, protect your whā nau, RAT test,’’ Whakarongorau Aotearoa chief executive Andrew Slater said.

‘‘If you’re positive, register it because that will put you on a pathway where you will get the information you need.

‘‘Look out for symptoms like shortness of breath.

‘‘Where you might need to call Healthline, look at the Health Navigator website.’’

High levels of respiratory illness – including the flu and Covid19 – were behind the jump in demand, but people were also calling the service because they could not get a GP appointment easily, Slater said.

The service is getting 2000 to 3000 calls a day, with the top complaints last weekend ‘‘cold, flu, cough, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain and rash’’.

On average calls lasted about 16 minutes over the past week, a slight increase on the week before. Last week 75% of calls were answered within 10 minutes, while the maximum wait was 42 minutes for one caller, Slater said.

Slater said it was a ‘‘winter like no other’’ but the organisation had scaled up to 325 health professionals – principally experienced nurses and paramedics – to cope. Prior to February 2020 there were 80 staff answering Healthline calls.

The proportion of callers requiring urgent medical care had stayed stable at 13%, Slater said.

About 22% were given ‘‘selfcare advice’’, and did not need to be referred to another health service, however staff always encouraged callers to call back if their symptoms worsened.

With huge pressure on urgent care, hospital and primary care services, Healthline helped people work out whether they needed to visit a GP or Emergency Department, Whakarongorau Aotearoa chief clinical officer Dr Ruth Large said.

‘‘It’s really important to get good ‘worsening’ advice because it helps people to figure out what actually is urgent and what is an emergency.’’

She said often people needed to take ‘‘really simple’’ actions such as staying home, taking paracetamol, resting and keeping their fluids up. Healthline staff could let people know what to look for and when they needed to take further action.