Risk and the Responsible Health Consumer: The Problematics of Entitlement among Callers to NHS Direct

Abstract

NHS Direct, the 24-hour telephone helpline, uses modern communications technology to offer easier and faster access to advice about health, illness and the NHS so that people are better able to care for themselves and their families. In-depth interviews with callers to the service show that they bring with them discourses of the ‘deserving’ and ‘ undeserving’ familiar in the provision of other welfare services. The figure of the ‘time-waster’ is the NHS equivalent of the welfare ‘scrounger’, acting as a mechanism to problematize entitlement. NHS Direct dispels such fears and legitimizes demand. At the same time, ever-rising levels of service use constitute a threat to what callers value most about it.