Professional and independent sites identify the “bad apples”

For those trying to find a good solicitor or lawyer there is, as yet, nothing equivalent to iWantGreatCare.

However, the approach (and technology) used by IWGC has been identified as key to creating a quality service that would benefit both the public and the legal profession:

“The idea of an impartial forum not sponsored or linked in anyway to the Law Society, where people can seek justice for disgraceful advice from a lawyer has its merits. Set up professionally and moderated independently, this kind of facility could help stamp out the bad apples that give the legal profession a bad name”

Being impartial, moderated and professional are at the heart of the IWGC vision. We believe that only by making such principles core to everything we do can the service help patients find great care, and at the same time help doctors and organisations ensure excellent patient experience.

Public to get much more information on GPs

Longstanding concerns about the variability in performance of GPs “have reached new heights” according to the Guardian. They cite the evidence that nearly half of all complaints about doctors to the GMC concern GPs (who only make up a third of UK doctors), and that negligence claims against GPs are soaring.

These concerns, combined with the Government’s drive for choice and transparency are driving initiatives to give the public much better information on which to choose their family doctor. A range of data will soon be available to help people ensure they are choosing the best doctor for themselves and their family and to help doctors themselves know just how well they are performing compared to their peers.

The NHS Medical Director, Sir Bruce Keogh, has told GPs that patients should be able to get information about the performance of their own doctors:

"The NHS is owned by the people of this country, who are its shareholders, and at times its reluctant or distressed customers. People are now their own bankers, their own travel agents and their own checkout cashiers. They expect to have data immediately available to make choices.”

Empowering patient choice and highlighting the very best doctors who do so much for their patients is of course at the heart of the iWantGreatCare vision. We will be combining the forthcoming NHS data on GPs with our unique, detailed ratings and reviews from patients to ensure that both patients and doctors can see who is delivering great care.

Do you have a great doctor? Let others know by adding a review of them now on iWantGreatCare - it takes less than two minutes and gives you a public way to say thank you for all their hard work.

Harnessing patient experience improves the care patients receive in Wales

The iWantGreatCare team is privileged (and not a little bit proud) to be an ongoing part of an innovative, powerful and important programme that is improving the service and experience of those receiving end of life care across Wales.

Edwina Hart, the Minster for Health and Social Services in Wales states that,

“...good palliative and end of life care must form part of the overall package of care provided to patients when and where it is needed, where ever possible, irrespective of their medical condition.”

There is total commitment and purpose in Wales to make real the intent behind this statement and the work of iWantGreatCare is just one part of an overall methodology and approach. But the detailed statement of the Minister vividly illustrates the central importance and power of continuously harnessing experience feedback from patients and their families.

“This patient feedback [iWantGreatCare] is directly influencing the work of the Implementation Board to steer service strategy for the future and further improve the care patients receive.

The programme provides an opportunity across the whole health economy for relatives to ‘tell us their experience’ when someone close to them was dying, describing both what went well and what did not go well. Its purpose is to share experiences with professionals to enable services to change and subsequently improve future services.”

To make this happen, the iWantGreatCare team worked closely with those delivering care across Wales to put in place a unique system that captures the experience of patients and their carers in a way that has never been done before. Feedback is collected both on and offline (in both English and Welsh) via a seamless, technology-enabled system that sends automated reports to those at the clinical frontline on a regular basis, as well as "instant alerts" that provide immediate electronic alerting when the experience of care falls from the high standards that the teams across Wales have set for themselves.

It is exciting to see that the harnessing of patient experience - when done in an innovative, engaging and evidence-based manner - really can deliver true improvements to the care of patients. In turn this motivates and inspires those delivering the care to reach even higher standards. This is the power of the iWantGreatCare approach: to turn patient feedback from what it has been to date (a routine data collection exercise of "box-ticking and meeting targets") into an active driver for service improvement and quality healthcare where success is measured through the eyes, wishes and needs of patients themselves.

Perhaps the greatest - and most pleasant - surprise of the iWantGreatCare programme in Wales has been the incredible response of the doctors and nurses about whose care the patients are continuously providing "ratings and reviews". Initially cautious about asking patients for comments and ratings, within a few weeks of starting the initiative the detailed feedback on their performance has become something that is highly valued and central to their own assessment of the quality and value of the work they do. The combination of structured, comparative ratings (perhaps the first time that NHS staff have been given continuous, detailed assessment on their performance as viewed by patients), with the qualitative, detailed stories told by grateful patients at a time of great need, has surprised many by its power to renew and refocus the passion they have for their work. It is not an exaggeration to say that staff with many years experience working in palliative care, have not only been moved to tears by the moving responses from patients, but have come to view the regular reports from iWantGreatCare as a central and motivating part of their work.

iWantGreatCare is now working to deliver these same benefits to healthcare professionals (and their patients) across the UK and across all specialties in primary and secondary care.

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.