Is the 111 service a price-gouging private enterprise?
Undoubtedly, and if my recent dealings with them are anything to go by, one that could be replaced by a small shell script.
I don't know how this is different from the actual case- which is a read-by-unqualified-person-script?
Shell scripts are cheaper to run, and marginally less gormless?
In the case of 111, a computer can give inappropriate medical advice
[1] immediately, rather than phoning you back at 4am to do it. Which is why you might as well use the
https://111.nhs.uk/ website.
The other thing that 111 is supposedly able to do, but fails at spectacularly, is give you details of services such as emergency dentists, out-of-hours pharmacies and so on. They're worse than google.
Bring back NHS Redirect. At least they had actual nurses.
[1] The problem is, as you say, they're unqualified. So if you phone them up with "I have $diagnosed_medical_condition with needs $urgent_treatment because $usual_doctor isn't available out of hours" all they can do is follow their script to mis-diagnose it as something else that doesn't require A&E and is therefore treatable with paracetamol.
