NHS monitoring systems

Patient experience - solving the problems of today's failed monitoring systems.

Existing methods of measuring and monitoring NHS quality and safety are repeatedly shown to be slow, insensitive, inaccurate and misleading. The Care Quality Commission relies on expensive, centralised, backward-looking data collection which does not drive the change needed, nor build confidence amongst the public.

After further hospital disasters in Mid-Staffordshire and Basildon (and, we are told, more to come) we need new approaches that actually work and win the support and con?dence of the public, professionals and the media. Harnessing the user-voice to understand patient experience has the ability to:

• reduce costs,
• raise quality,
• empower patients,
• increase safety.

Using innovative technologies (well proven in other industries) makes it easy for patients (and their relatives and carers) to provide feedback in a valid, robust, structured manner, thereby delivering accessible, meaningful information about the things that matter to users.

To deliver this change requires vision, resolve and a willingness to absolute transparency in public services. It will reveal some difficult truths about the variation in quality across the NHS - but ultimately all patients, all staff and all NHS organisations will benefit.