Hospitals to assess satisfaction ‘in real time’

Health secretary Alan Johnson told the Labour Party conference yesterday that he wants to see NHS trusts collecting “immediate feedback” from patients on their experience of care.

The Mirror newspaper was briefed that this might mean hospitals giving patients PDAs. However, the Department of Health could only say that trusts might “opt” to use hand-held devices.

The DH also pointed to Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s experience of using the Patient Experience Tracker developed by Dr Foster Intelligence.

This is an electronic surveying tool placed in wards and departments that allows patients to provide instant feedback on their experience. Questions are available in a number of languages and cover topics such as privacy, dignity and staff attitude.

The results are publicly displayed in each ward or department where the survey takes place, along with agreed actions for improvement. The initiative won the Excellence in Health Information Management award in last year’s BT E-Health Insider awards.

The judges were impressed that the system used to record patients’ views about their care yielded such rich information and that staff had made a commitment to act on the results.

In his speech to the party conference in Manchester, Mr Johnson said he wanted “each hospital to know within two weeks how patients feel about their care.” He said this would allow the NHS to start to “link patient experience with clinical outcome.”

The health secretary’s intervention is in line with Lord Darzi’s Next Stage Review of the NHS and the Health Informatics Review, both of which stressed the need for more information to support choice and quality.

The Darzi review says that trusts will have to start submitting information for new patient reported outcome measures (PROMS) by 2009 and that a small amount of their income will be linked to the new measures by 2010 – unless commissioners want to go faster.

Commissioners will be expected to engage with patients and the public, and assessed on whether they are making systematic use of this information when commissioning as part of the world class commissioning agenda.

A DH spokesperson said: “Collecting ‘real time’ feedback from patients is essential in driving up standards of NHS care across the country. The rapid response system will enable NHS trusts to build better personalisation of care and assess how they are doing.”