Telephone-accessed health care plays a significant part in the delivery of urgent care internationally. NHS 111 is a telephone service set up to improve and simplify access to non-emergency National Health Service health care in England. The first aim of this research was to describe population awareness and use of this new service, overall and within different sub-groups. In doing so, the second aim was to identify any inequity in awareness or use of telephone-accessed health care.

We undertook a telephone survey to assess awareness and use of NHS 111 in four sites. Random digit dialing was undertaken to identify 2000 respondents in each site. The survey was undertaken in 2011, approximately 9–10 months after the launch of NHS 111 in each site. Eight thousand and ten members of the general population completed a questionnaire.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents had heard of NHS 111 and 9% reported ever using NHS 111. Respondents were less likely to have used NHS 111 if they were older (p ≤ 0.001), male (p ≤ 0.001), and did not have a disability/limiting long-term illness (p ≤ 0.001) or own their home (p = 0.039).

The use of the telephone as an important means of access to urgent care may be problematic if some groups in the population are less likely to use it. Policy makers and service providers may need to consider other ways of offering access to care or deliver targeted publicity campaigns to encourage the use of telephone-accessed health care amongst specific groups within a population.