NHS trusts in England sometimes tell us that we are displaying stories on their trust pages which are about services they don’t run.
For example, they may see stories on their pages about a local health centre or a clinic location owned by a general practice or a different trust.
Almost always, such stories have come via nhs.uk.
Why does this happen?
If you see a story within your subscription linked to a service your organisation doesn’t run, you can understand what is happening as follows:
1: View the story page to see whether it has come via nhs.uk. If the story has not come via nhs.uk, then please contact us so we can correct it.
2: If the story has come via nhs.uk, follow the link alongside the nhs.uk logo on the story page to visit the “ratings and reviews” page on nhs.uk where the story is displayed.
For example, here is a typical nhs.uk “ratings and reviews” page:
https://www.nhs.uk/services/clinic/aldershot-centre-for-health/RX2Y1/ratings-and-reviews
The code in link to the page (in this case RX2Y1) is the national ODS code for this service. ODS codes are created by NHS England from data provided by trusts about their service locations.
If a trust provides a service at a clinic, a school, a scout hut or anywhere else, it will provide this data to ODS, which will issue a code. Many of these locations will be run by some other organisation, such as a general practice or a different trust.
You can look up any code on the ODS Portal to see which organisation it is part of
3: The story appears on this page because the patient told it through the corresponding “Leave a review” page with the same ODS code.
For the example above, the patient has used this page to leave their feedback:
https://www.nhs.uk/services/clinic/aldershot-centre-for-health/RX2Y1/leave-a-review
4: Scroll to the bottom of either of the pages linked above (or the relevant page in your own case) and you will see the name of the organisation which has provided the ODS code being used by nhs.uk.
Most likely, this will turn out to be the name of your own organisation.
5: Care Opinion simply imports this data from nhs.uk, and uses the same ODS code as that of the page where the story was told. We don’t “link the story to the wrong trust”: that has already happened when the patient chose a page on nhs.uk (probably provided by your organisation) to give their feedback.
What can you do to fix this?
Care Opinion can’t fix this problem for you because we don’t control the data your organisation has created, or the way nhs.uk uses it.
But you can consider two different approaches to help fix this problem.
First, if you believe a story on nhs.uk is linked to the wrong place, you can let nhs.uk know and ask them to move it to a different ODS code. If you are able to provide the correct ODS code, then you are more likely to succeed.
Once the story has been moved, feel free to ask us also to move the copy on Care Opinion. You will need to send us a link to the story on Care Opinion, and a link to the story (now in the correct place) on nhs.uk.
Second, if you believe that your trust is listing service locations on nhs.uk incorrectly, you can ask your trust administrators or nhs.uk to remove specific pages for specific ODS codes. This will prevent patients posting further feedback about locations where you don’t provide a service.