iWantGreatCare founder gives EU keynote

Dr Neil Bacon, founder of iWantGreatCare, was an invited speaker at the EU's prestigious E-Health 2010 conference in Barcelona last month.

Taking the title, "Citizen 2.0 - harnessing patient experience for better healthcare", he outlined how services such as iWantGreatCare represent one of the most powerful drivers for improved quality, transparency and accountability in European healthcare systems. The presentation, which can be viewed below, focused on the power of systematically collected patient experience data to both reduce inequalities and drive down healthcare costs across all European member states.

"The informed citizen has true choice and creates massive pressure of "market forces" on providers."

Talk - Part 1

Talk - Part 2

What’s so good about the NHS?

“When the NHS is working well, its service is excellent”, says Chris Bond in the Yorkshire Post this week. Well done to all the staff at Leeds General Infirmary for delivering great care.

He recounts a story of his minor illness and how it highlighted (to his surprise) the excellence within the NHS. The author talked to Dr Shaibal Roy (Managing Director of iWantGreatCare) about this experience and how understanding the input of patients is at "the centre of care" because it helps staff to understand what patients want and where they can improve.

"Understanding the human aspect of hospital care isn't new, but I think the idea of harnessing it and trying to get feedback from every patient definitely is. It's not about being touchy-feely, but if you engage with a patient, if you get them involved and treat them with respect and dignity then they are more likely to listen and follow what the doctor, or surgeon says." says Dr Roy.

Above all, he says, the experience of patients is crucial. "Whether people are being treated for an injured finger or a life-threatening illness, we want to make the kind of experience you had routine, we want everyone to get that level of care and that's the challenge."

An elegant explanation of how iWantGreatCare helps patients, doctors and organisations.

Finding great GPs and fantastic hospitals

[Today's announcement by the Health Secretary will be of interest to all those using, following, or already working with, iWantgreatcare. As you are aware, the iWantgreatcare service is the only way for the UK public to get information on individual doctors to help them choose great care for themselves and their families.]

As Andy Burnham said today, the NHS is good, but needs to be great.

In fact, much of the NHS is not even good - but parts of it are fantastic.

Harnessing the experience and views of patients and their relatives is the key to driving out the poor, building on the good, and identifying the fantastic - this is the central truth underpinning iWantGreatCare.

But today's speech by the Secretary of State is important in announcing the overdue policy change that will allow the power of patients to drive the quality improvements that can make the NHS great. By giving patients the ability to choose who cares for them, and by linking hospital budgets to patient experience, those delivering care who do not focus on the total satisfaction and experience of their patients will be exposed, will lose patients and will lose funding. They will improve - or be replaced by better services, delivering better quality care.

With free choice over who cares for themselves and their family, patients will seek out the information to make informed decisions. NHS Choices, iWantGreatCare and others will meet this need, empowering patients and allowing them to find truly great care. Indeed, the thousands of patients already using iWantGreatCare shows the scale of public demand for transparent, independent knowledge about the quality and experience of healthcare - and the unique way in which users value the views and experiences of their fellow patients.

The best NHS Trusts, doctors and hospitals know this already and are using new ways to capture, understand and use patient experience to improve quality, reduce costs and ensure total focus on the needs of their patients. iWantGreatCare already works with some of the UK's most innovative healthcare providers; NHS Trusts who know that continuously capturing and understanding real-time patient experience from thousands of users, every day of the year, across all the services they deliver is the key to quality improvement. These are organisations not afraid of the suggestions and criticisms of users, but who actively encourage and facilitate such feedback, seeing all comments as opportunities to correct and improve everything they do.

Today's announcement shows that they (and their patients) will be the winners.

NHS Digital Dreams

"...a policy that emphasises choice needs to put information at its very core"
Although not brand new, it is worth reviewing this HSJ article from August 2007, to see how much progress has been made (or not) in supporting patients in making informed choices over their healthcare.
Is the view of Angela Coulter (former Chief Executive of Picker Europe) that "information on sites such as NHS Choices and NHS Direct online tends be 'didactic, rather old-fashioned and paternalistic' rather than recognising patients' roles in making decisions about their healthcare" a fair view of today's service? Or is the NHS now making the digital dreams of patients reality?

Related articles

• Web searches feed health fears
• Review of NHS Direct to reduce number of patients it refers to GPs and hospitals
• Capita gets £60m deal to merge NHS websites

The Queen talks about patient experience

The Health Bill outlined in the Queen's speech included information about how patient experience will become an increasingly important driver to change and improvement in the NHS.

Central funding will be directly linked to the opinion of patients, whilst the expansion of informed patient choice will mean that those healthcare organisations failing to deliver excellent patient experience (and making sure the public and commissioners know about it!) will see a slow and steady fall in patient referrals.

"Poorly-performing hospitals, as judged by their patients, will receive less funding."
"The NHS constitution will give patients a legal right to choose where to be treated, including a choice of GP practice."

Related articles

• NHS hospitals 'suffering from lack of compassion'
• The NHS Constitution Will Provide Real Benefits To Patients - The King's Fund Response To The Queen's Speech

Consumers can't find best deals - what about patients?

A lack of clear, comparative information makes it hard for consumers to get the best deals in utilities such as mobile phones, gas and electricity. Not a great surprise to read the results of a study showing providers making minimal efforts to help the customer. Worse still is that the elderly and those from lower social classes do especially badly from this situation.

All those working in healthcare will recognise parallels in this story. In the UK the "pushy middle class" are known to be more active in demanding and choosing the services they needs - and achieve better health outcomes than those from less privileged backgrounds.

As the Government pushes its "patient choice" agenda there is a very real risk that this health gap will rapidly widen. Given how difficult it is to source something as simple as the best electricity deal, then how much harder will our patients find it to ensure they can choose truly great care for themselves and their families?

BBC news - Consumers can't find the best deals