The value of independence in handling patients opinion

Today a damming report was issued by the NHS Ombudsman in which it pulled no punches in its opinion of the standards of NHS care for the elderly. The report outlined 10 particular cases where it said that the complaints it received were "harrowing" and the ultimate conclusion was that many of the elderly were denied the "most basic" of human needs. Ms Abraham, the reports publisher, warned that these were not simply isolated one off cases and that the NHS required a deep reform of its attitudes regarding the care of the elderly. Should you wish to view the full report is available here:>>>>

Part of this reform, in her opinion was the requirement for a more consistent approach to complaints handling. She was critical of the fact that it required great tenacity to see a complaint either through the system, or ultimately to the Ombudsmen. The first stage of any complaint is generally channelled through the local health trust or the GP practice.  She acknowledged that this often leads to a dead end and that many simply gave up on their complaint. "it's just so extraordinary when you think of so many organisations who would think that that kind of feedback was gold dust when it comes to improving their services." She often heard complainants who simply said "It's not worth speaking up, nothing ever changes"

At Patient Opinion we are all aware that the more independent opinion is deemed to be - the more valuable (and more likely it is to be taken seriously) it is to all concerned. Earlier today in a routine check on our web statistics I noticed a particular visit from a NHS trust using the search string "XXXX (the name of the hospital) complaints". Being somewhat curious I followed the link from the web tracker and saw exactly what pages were being visited. The hospital representative was of course checking out stories of their own hospital on the Patient Opinion site. It would be correct to say that of the stories posted on our site not all were complimentary. In fact, more than 50% of the most recent stories were all concerns that were critical. I decided to follow through and visit the hospitals own site and took a glance at the feedback / stories page. The trust painted a very rosy picture with not one of the stories critical - yet switch to our site and you saw a very different view from the patients and users of the services at this hospital.

Now I suppose it would be somewhat odd for hospitals and trusts to allow the posting of critical stories on their own website, perhaps a bit like a turkey voting for Xmas! Then of course one would wonder if patients and relatives would be reluctant and wary of posting negative experiences direct on a trust or hospital website, according to Ms Abrahams they probably wouldn't consider it worthwhile! That is where services like Patient Opinions' or even NHS Choices, to a lesser extent, come into their own as it encourages people to leave feedback anonymously with no interaction with the hospital required.

Now the purpose here is to not necessarily play on negatives, in fact a large majority of stories on Patient Opinion are indeed "thankyou" and "well dones", it is important for the health service to know when it is performing well, just as much as when it isn't. However to gain a true and rounded view of a hospital one does need to escape from the official line and here is of course the value of independently categorised feedback and opinion.

Perhaps Ms Abraham might like to give us a call!