Smoke alarm to detect poor patient care

Dr Neil Bacon has written a short piece on his personal blog describing how patient experience (the ratings and reviews that patients submit on their doctor and hospital) can act as a “smoke alarm” for patient safety.

When there are 500,000 reviews on iWantGreatCare, UK healthcare will be safer and better than it is now - thank you for making your contribution to that journey.

Citizen power will transform the NHS

An article by Dr Neil Bacon, founder of iWantGreatCare, has been published on the Public Service website. Co-written with Professor David Kerr, advisor to the Government, it describes the unique power that the public and patients have to transform the NHS, and ensure that they and their familes get the very best care.

How can the public properly understand what sort of care their local GP, dentist or hospital provides, let alone be part of a process of improving the quality?

Some would say that sort of improvement programme should be left to the government, hospitals and medical professions. However, evidence suggests otherwise. Perhaps in this case, rather than the doctor, it is the patient who knows best.

In order to start this information revolution citizens need unfettered access to two sorts of information: clinical outcome and performance data (hospital infection rates, cancer survival figures) and the shared experiences of other patients.

Will you be the one in five who gets poor care?

One in five women ‘failed by NHS’ in labour.

This weeks report about the variation in quality of UK maternity services provides yet another example of why patients and the public need to make careful choices about their care - who provides it and where it is is delivered.

But how to find the best care when there is so little information allowing you to compare one hospital or doctor against another?

The views and opinions of other patients and users of healthcare is known to be accurate in predicting where great care can be had - and helping all of us avoid those hospitals that doctors and nurses know to avoid!

This brings with it an obligation on all who use services to provide their feedback: to help the next patient, to say thank you for great care, and to highlight how hospitals can improve what they do.