Why?

Why do we need a new approach to using patient experience?

Patients and the public want to know they are getting great care.

(and existing systems do not make it possible for patients to identify and choose the very best care)

Doctors and nurses deserve to get regular, comparative feedback on the care they give.

(but only a tiny percentage of those working in the NHS get timely, personalised, comparative feedback on how the great work they do is perceived by patients)

Organisations need to be fully and continuously aware of the quality of all the care they deliver if they are to become world-class.

(this ensures excellence is recognised and disseminated, and poor care is identified before patients are harmed)

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.

Doctor-patient communication (again!)

Hospitalized patients and their doctors often have differing beliefs regarding patients' knowledge and aspects of their care, suggesting a need for improved patient-physician communication, according to research published in the Aug. 9/23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Nearly all physicians (98%) stated that they at least sometimes discussed their patients' fears and anxieties, compared with 54% of patients who said their physicians never did this (P = .001).

As a doctor if you really want to know if your communication with patients is any good (and where you can improve), then you need to ask every patient and every relative how well you are doing - they will tell you! iWantGreatCare makes this simple, easy and revealing, and can be fully integrated with your appraisal and personal development. Start here.

As a patient, please help your doctor by telling them how they are doing in this respect. All as good as it could be? Then use iWantGreatCare to praise and thank those looking after you.

Over-50s increasingly doing research online

Recent research by the UK Online Measurement Company revealed that the number of Britons using the internet had risen by nearly 2 million in the space of 12 months, with the biggest growth witnessed in the over-50s age group. The charity Age UK advises older people to make the most of the internet, claiming that they could save both time and money by getting online. It also notes that broadband access gives older people "a wealth of information at your fingertips" and - in a brochure produced with BT - recommends use of online comparison sites.

It is interesting how many people in senior health positions across the UK claim that web-based ratings and reviews of healthcare discriminate against the older patient. I wonder where they get that prejudice from?

Peer learning, support and online communities

If you were designing a disease treatment system from scratch, bringing together clinicians, patients, researchers, and advocates, what platform would you use to take advantage of the community created by this umbrella group?

This is the question posed by Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet project. She uses the extended discussion session that iWantGreatCare was part of at Health 2.0 in Paris earlier this year to consider some of the challenges, opportunities and lessons already learnt.

As we move from hospital-based to shared, integrated, community models of delivering services this is a question of urgent importance to all those in the UK.

Take home message: it is not about the doctors or buildings, it is all about the patients.