If you are viewing this page, it is likely that your organisation provides services to people and you would like this on Care Opinion.
We have created some guidance below to support you to create and update your service tree. Updates to service trees can only be requested by the subscription leads. This is because any changes have the potential to disrupt existing members alerts, reports and visualisations. Plus lead will need to create alerts for any new services to make sure feedback is responded to.
Some things to consider before you start
- A single service cannot be listed multiple times
- Service trees should be as simple as possible to help authors (and moderators) link stories to the right service
- Service names and locations should be recognised by the service user
- We strongly recommend not listing services by directorates - these can change often, are not understood by the public and can be managed via reporting instead
- prioritise services rolling out Care Opinion. The only reason to add a service to your service tree is if they are promoting Care Opinion and are expecting feedback*
*If we receive a story about a service not on your tree, we will link it to your organisation so you can still respond immediately and once the service is added we can link the story to it. Not having the service on the service tree is not a barrier to stories being shared or responded to .
An organisation's service tree
On Care Opinion, a service tree represents all the services provided by an organisation to the public, and how they should be grouped.
This is separate from your subscription and subscription scope. If your organisation does not provide any services directly to the public, then it will not have a service tree on Care Opinion but it may have a subscription. For example, a local diabetes charity may not provide any services but the charity can have it's own subscription and that would be scoped to all stories about diabetic medicine in a local area.
A service tree is organised in a hierarchy, like a family tree. For example, a hospital may have departments (children), and within those departments wards or clinics (grandchildren).
A community healthcare provider may have localities (children) and within those localities, teams (grandchildren). Every service listed on the tree must have a name, and is uniquely identified by a code (the nacs code). Many services will also have a location.
Specific services in a service tree will also have one or more treatment functions (or types of care) which describe what the service provides. For example, a coronary care unit will have the cardiology treatment function, while a community frailty team may have treatment functions like physiotherapy, OT and rehabilitation.
Setting up a service tree
Most providers will already have a service tree of some kind on Care Opinion. This data may have been supplied by NHS Digital through their ODS NACS system, or via CQC or another data set provided to us at a national level.
If you can find your organisation using the search function on Care Opinion you already have a service tree but this may need updating or changing. Scroll to the next section to see more on this.
Begin setting up a service tree
Changes to a service tree
A service tree may need to change over time, to best reflect the services provided by the organisation at the present moment. There may be different reasons for a service tree to change:
- There may be mistakes to be corrected
- New services may open
- Old services may close
- A service may change its name or function
- A service may move from one location or grouping to another
- A service may not have been added to you service tree yet but is ready to collect feedback
Request changes to a service tree (including adding single services)
How long does it take?
Making changes to service trees is quite complicated. Especially if the service tree already have stories linked to it. We process spreadsheets in date order. We aim to complete service tree requests within two weeks.