Hospital Trip Advisor
Here's a good news NHS story - one of Scotland's largest health boards, NHS Lanarkshire, has linked up with a web site that allows patients (and presumably their families) to share online their experiences of hospital visits and suchlike.
Now I've written about this before on the blog site and it seems like an eminently sensible idea to me - and Patient Opinion is an independent, not-for-profit, site aimed at giving NHS patients and carers a stronger voice.
I suspect most of the comments will be positive, but issue is about responding to feedback both good and bad - without having to get involved in all the hassle and stews of making a formal complaint.
Apparently the Scottish Government has made extra funding available to all Scottish NHS boards to provide patient feedback through the Patient Opinion website.
I've still to have a proper look at the site, but here is the link for anyone who is interested in what it has to say.
http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/ContactUs/Feedback/Pages/patient-opinion.aspx
Trip Advisor (2 December 2013)
I wrote on the blog site about a the need for an NHS 'Trip Advisor' months ago and lo and behold it has come to pass - south of the border at least, according to this report in the Sunday Times.
To my mind the NHS needs to focus more on the actual experience patients and their families - and less so on the vested interest groups that are already well represented and tend to dominate the health agenda.
The irony is that most of the feedback from customer and patients is very positive which is what I think you would expect because most NHS care is good.
But putting in place a system where people can comment honestly and freely without making a formal complaint must be a good thing - surely?
I hope the health minister in Scotland is listening because I suspect this is the shape of things to come.
Patients attack care on NHS ‘TripAdvisor’
By Jon Ungoed-Thomas
Reviews are mainly favourable, although some serious care failures have been alleged (Sinead Lynch)
MISTAKES made in administering drugs to patients, not enough staff working at weekends and failures in maternity care are all exposed in posts made on a new NHS website that invites patients to rate their medical care.
The pilot Care Connect website — the NHS equivalent of TripAdvisor — ranks hospitals by user reviews and is being launched across the country.
Doctors and nurses who have seen the reputation of the NHS tarnished by the Mid Staffordshire trust scandal and other failures will be heartened by the mainly favourable reviews, although some serious care failures have been alleged, such as:
■ Not diagnosing a woman’s ectopic pregnancy, leading to a ruptured fallopian tube
■ Mistakes made in administering drugs — one patient was told that hers, prescribed in error, would be “extremely dangerous” for her condition
■ A cancer patient left all night without morphine because staff did not know how to replace the bottle.
The Care Connect website, which also publishes patient survey results, collates reviews from 20 trusts in London and the northeast. Others across the nation are being urged to join.
Users can file specific complaints, either confidentially or openly, write reviews and rate the care they have received from one to five.
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust in Surrey, one of the trusts in the pilot, has more than 80 reviews with St Helier Hospital earning an average rating of three stars.
One patient complaining about treatment at St Helier Hospital said that accident and emergency staff failed to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy even though she was in significant pain.
She wrote: “I was seen by a nurse who told me everything was fine and refused to do a scan. I told her the pain was unbearable and she just said I should go home and rest.” She said she suffered a ruptured fallopian tube as a result.
It was the same hospital that allegedly failed to provide adequate morphine to another patient after an operation for bowel cancer. A relative of the patient wrote: “She was left without morphine for a few hours — something she needs every 4 to 5 minutes.
“This was because day staff had left less than half a bottle in the machine, which then ran out, and the night staff did not know how . . . to replace it.” The trust has since contacted the family and is dealing with the complaint.
At Edgware Community Hospital in north London, a female patient’s mother complained about the management of her prescribed drugs. She wrote: “My daughter was given the wrong prescription. When I went to the pharmacy I checked with them that the medication was safe to take and was told it . . . was extremely dangerous for her [in view of her] diagnosis.”
Other unfavourable reviews focus on a lack of staff on maternity wards, a failure to attend to patients and a shortage of staff at weekends.
At Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one mother complained of “four different midwives in nine hours” and of being “continuously alone and without help”.
A reviewer of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead complained of the conditions in accident and emergency with “blood on the walls in the gents’ toilet” and “blood on the walls of the consultation area were I was first seen”.
The trust’s response was that its cleaning service operates 24 hours a day, but the areas described must have been overlooked.
The Care Connect site also provides examples of excellent care. Hammersmith Hospital in west London, also part of Imperial, earns an average four out of five stars from a total of 47 reviews. One user wrote: “My son was diagnosed with leukaemia. I have been absolutely amazed at how fabulous the facilities are [and] how well the staff have been treating us. You could not ask for more.”
The website is part of a drive to transform the culture of the NHS, giving greater transparency and better services driven by the demands and experiences of patients.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “This is a very positive step in the right direction — to a more open and honest NHS.” She added that the system should encourage reviews and ratings for each ward and department, as the quality can vary significantly within individual trusts.
I am beginning to think that Dr Peter Carter - the chief executive of Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - is losing the plot.
The leader of the country's largest nursing union was in the papers at the weekend - making some rather extraordinary claims about poor standards of care in the NHS - and here's what Dr Carter had to say:
“Will there be another Mid Staffs? Yes, sadly there will be. There are 1.2 million people employed in the NHS and there is a hospital in every town. It would be foolish to say everything in the garden is roses.
Mid Staffs cannot be an isolated incident. The fact is, the service is under huge strain. Trusts are not thinking intelligently about how they deliver care and are simply cutting the numbers of frontline staff. Our members have a personal and professional responsibility to raise concerns.
The vast majority of patients still get good care, but that is no consolation to those who don’t. Mid Staffs has got this massive profile now, but there have been many others like it . . . Bristol Royal Infirmary, Basildon, Alder Hey. The report into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [where hundreds of patients died after an outbreak of the superbug C-difficile] is painful to read. On the wards there were beds that were eight inches apart ... what the hell were the managers doing, but also what was going on with the nursing culture? There was a culture of bullying and intimidation.
If the board had spent time walking the wards, talking to patients and staff, just doing their jobs, they may have saved hundreds of lives.
You wouldn’t expect staff at Kwik-Fit to get by with a bit of TLC and a bit of common sense. These are old people ... their bones are like porcelain, their skin is like tissue paper. They need highly skilled specialist care. The idea that four or five unskilled staff can take care of 30 elderly patients is nonsense.”
Now these comments come in advance of the report on Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust - where poor standards of care said to have caused up to 1,200 unnecessary deaths between 2005 and 2008.
So the first point to be made is that the scandal of Mid Staffs happened at a time of plenty for the NHS - which means that, broadly speaking, resources and money were not any part of the problem.
The second point I would make is that the NHS is one of the most highly unionised industries in the UK - and the RCN is one of the largest, most influential trade unions - with lots of RCN members in senior management and leadership positions.
In which case I fail to see how it can sensibly be argued that Trust's board members were somehow responsible for saving hundreds of lives - when there were all these staff around who were paid, some of them very generously as well, to look after patients.
I happen to think it would be a good for NHS board members to interact more with patients and their families - but surely this would be much more practical if the regulatory bodies in the UK made more unannounced inspection visits - and actually asked patients and families for their views on the standard of care received.
My mother died five years ago after and before she passed away my mum was a frequent visitor to her local hospital where - I think it's fair to say - that some of the care she received was very poor.
But no one asked my mum what she thought of her care - nor any of her family - which strikes me as very odd in this day and age - because feedback from patients and families is the obvious way to highlight underlying problems.
To paraphrase Dr Carter's own analogy - I think I receive much better customer care from Kwik-Fit than my dear old mum did at times - from her local NHS hospital.
A former health secretary in the last Labour government - Alan Milburn - came up with an interesting idea recently with his suggestion that the NHS needs an equivalent of Trip Advisor - so that patients and their families can provide useful feedback after a hospital visit.
People power meets patient power - now that really ought to be part of the answer.
MISTAKES made in administering drugs to patients, not enough staff working at weekends and failures in maternity care are all exposed in posts made on a new NHS website that invites patients to rate their medical care.
The pilot Care Connect website — the NHS equivalent of TripAdvisor — ranks hospitals by user reviews and is being launched across the country.
Doctors and nurses who have seen the reputation of the NHS tarnished by the Mid Staffordshire trust scandal and other failures will be heartened by the mainly favourable reviews, although some serious care failures have been alleged, such as:
■ Not diagnosing a woman’s ectopic pregnancy, leading to a ruptured fallopian tube
■ Mistakes made in administering drugs — one patient was told that hers, prescribed in error, would be “extremely dangerous” for her condition
■ A cancer patient left all night without morphine because staff did not know how to replace the bottle.
The Care Connect website, which also publishes patient survey results, collates reviews from 20 trusts in London and the northeast. Others across the nation are being urged to join.
Users can file specific complaints, either confidentially or openly, write reviews and rate the care they have received from one to five.
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust in Surrey, one of the trusts in the pilot, has more than 80 reviews with St Helier Hospital earning an average rating of three stars.
One patient complaining about treatment at St Helier Hospital said that accident and emergency staff failed to diagnose her ectopic pregnancy even though she was in significant pain.
She wrote: “I was seen by a nurse who told me everything was fine and refused to do a scan. I told her the pain was unbearable and she just said I should go home and rest.” She said she suffered a ruptured fallopian tube as a result.
It was the same hospital that allegedly failed to provide adequate morphine to another patient after an operation for bowel cancer. A relative of the patient wrote: “She was left without morphine for a few hours — something she needs every 4 to 5 minutes.
“This was because day staff had left less than half a bottle in the machine, which then ran out, and the night staff did not know how . . . to replace it.” The trust has since contacted the family and is dealing with the complaint.
At Edgware Community Hospital in north London, a female patient’s mother complained about the management of her prescribed drugs. She wrote: “My daughter was given the wrong prescription. When I went to the pharmacy I checked with them that the medication was safe to take and was told it . . . was extremely dangerous for her [in view of her] diagnosis.”
Other unfavourable reviews focus on a lack of staff on maternity wards, a failure to attend to patients and a shortage of staff at weekends.
At Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, one mother complained of “four different midwives in nine hours” and of being “continuously alone and without help”.
A reviewer of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead complained of the conditions in accident and emergency with “blood on the walls in the gents’ toilet” and “blood on the walls of the consultation area were I was first seen”.
The trust’s response was that its cleaning service operates 24 hours a day, but the areas described must have been overlooked.
The Care Connect site also provides examples of excellent care. Hammersmith Hospital in west London, also part of Imperial, earns an average four out of five stars from a total of 47 reviews. One user wrote: “My son was diagnosed with leukaemia. I have been absolutely amazed at how fabulous the facilities are [and] how well the staff have been treating us. You could not ask for more.”
The website is part of a drive to transform the culture of the NHS, giving greater transparency and better services driven by the demands and experiences of patients.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “This is a very positive step in the right direction — to a more open and honest NHS.” She added that the system should encourage reviews and ratings for each ward and department, as the quality can vary significantly within individual trusts.
Hospital Trip Advisor (4 February 2013)
I am beginning to think that Dr Peter Carter - the chief executive of Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - is losing the plot.
The leader of the country's largest nursing union was in the papers at the weekend - making some rather extraordinary claims about poor standards of care in the NHS - and here's what Dr Carter had to say:
“Will there be another Mid Staffs? Yes, sadly there will be. There are 1.2 million people employed in the NHS and there is a hospital in every town. It would be foolish to say everything in the garden is roses.
Mid Staffs cannot be an isolated incident. The fact is, the service is under huge strain. Trusts are not thinking intelligently about how they deliver care and are simply cutting the numbers of frontline staff. Our members have a personal and professional responsibility to raise concerns.
The vast majority of patients still get good care, but that is no consolation to those who don’t. Mid Staffs has got this massive profile now, but there have been many others like it . . . Bristol Royal Infirmary, Basildon, Alder Hey. The report into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [where hundreds of patients died after an outbreak of the superbug C-difficile] is painful to read. On the wards there were beds that were eight inches apart ... what the hell were the managers doing, but also what was going on with the nursing culture? There was a culture of bullying and intimidation.
If the board had spent time walking the wards, talking to patients and staff, just doing their jobs, they may have saved hundreds of lives.
You wouldn’t expect staff at Kwik-Fit to get by with a bit of TLC and a bit of common sense. These are old people ... their bones are like porcelain, their skin is like tissue paper. They need highly skilled specialist care. The idea that four or five unskilled staff can take care of 30 elderly patients is nonsense.”
Now these comments come in advance of the report on Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust - where poor standards of care said to have caused up to 1,200 unnecessary deaths between 2005 and 2008.
So the first point to be made is that the scandal of Mid Staffs happened at a time of plenty for the NHS - which means that, broadly speaking, resources and money were not any part of the problem.
The second point I would make is that the NHS is one of the most highly unionised industries in the UK - and the RCN is one of the largest, most influential trade unions - with lots of RCN members in senior management and leadership positions.
In which case I fail to see how it can sensibly be argued that Trust's board members were somehow responsible for saving hundreds of lives - when there were all these staff around who were paid, some of them very generously as well, to look after patients.
I happen to think it would be a good for NHS board members to interact more with patients and their families - but surely this would be much more practical if the regulatory bodies in the UK made more unannounced inspection visits - and actually asked patients and families for their views on the standard of care received.
My mother died five years ago after and before she passed away my mum was a frequent visitor to her local hospital where - I think it's fair to say - that some of the care she received was very poor.
But no one asked my mum what she thought of her care - nor any of her family - which strikes me as very odd in this day and age - because feedback from patients and families is the obvious way to highlight underlying problems.
To paraphrase Dr Carter's own analogy - I think I receive much better customer care from Kwik-Fit than my dear old mum did at times - from her local NHS hospital.
A former health secretary in the last Labour government - Alan Milburn - came up with an interesting idea recently with his suggestion that the NHS needs an equivalent of Trip Advisor - so that patients and their families can provide useful feedback after a hospital visit.
People power meets patient power - now that really ought to be part of the answer.
