To: GP Practices Nominated Recipients for Alerts to Patient Feedback on NHS Choices

Transcription

1 To: GP Practices Nominated Recipients for Alerts to Patient Feedback on NHS Choices Gateway Reference: th October 2009 GP PRACTICE PATIENT FEEDBACK ON NHS CHOICES Dear Colleague From mid October 2009, patients will have the opportunity to post feedback on about their experience of visiting their GP practice. I enclose a briefing that explains how the feedback system will operate, including how practices can respond to comments, and the safeguards that will prevent unwarranted threats to the reputation of a practice or individual staff members. NHS Choices receives over 7 million visits per month, with 30% of all visits to the site from people seeking information on local healthcare facilities, such as GP services. The GP practice pages are very popular and provide an effective way for practices to promote themselves to the local community. Patient feedback will appear on the individual practice profiles and we anticipate that the numbers of visits to these pages will increase further. It is therefore important to ensure that information such as surgery times, is checked regularly and kept up to date. The most effective way to ensure that your practice details are correct is to directly manage the information on your service. Over half of all practices now edit and maintain their own data on To take ownership of your data simply contact our service desk at the number below and they will provide you with all the information you need. 1

2 I hope the attached briefing provides all the information you need. However, please contact our dedicated GP service desk with any further questions on or Yours sincerely Gary Ashby Programme Director NHS Choices 2

3 BRIEFING: GP PRACTICE PATIENT FEEDBACK ON NHS CHOICES INTRODUCTION In October 2009, the public will be given the facility to post online feedback about their experience of visiting GP practices on the NHS Choices website The purpose of this briefing is to explain how patient feedback will operate and how GP practices can respond to comments on the website. BACKGROUND NHS Choices is the primary public facing website of the NHS and regularly receives over 7 million visits a month. It launched in June 2007 to provide a comprehensive and trusted source of reliable health information to help people make the most of their health and get the best out of the healthcare system. Its 80,000 pages include directories of local health services, information on hundreds of treatments and conditions, accessible public health information, and comparative data about healthcare providers, to help people make informed choices about their healthcare. One of the guiding principles of NHS Choices is that a modern, taxpayer funded NHS should provide the public with the opportunity to comment publicly on the services they receive. Since its launch, patients have been able to post online feedback about their hospital experience. To date 15,000 comments have been posted, 75% of which contain positive feedback. The patient feedback facility is now being extended to GP practices and the long-term objective is to facilitate feedback on the majority of NHS services. PRACTICE FEEDBACK ON NHS CHOICES Users who want to leave a comment should firstly locate the relevant practice on NHS Choices and then under the Performance and Feedback section click on Add your comments. Patients will be asked to state whether, based on their overall practice experience, they would recommend it to a friend. They will then be asked to evaluate the practice in the following areas: Reaching the practice by telephone; Making a convenient appointment; 3

4 Being treated with dignity and respect; Involvement in decisions about care and treatment; Information on services and opening times. Free text boxes will enable patients to describe in more detail: o what they liked about their experience; o what could be improved; o anything else. Patient comments will appear on the practice s profile page under What patients say. PRACTICES RIGHT OF REPLY Each practice will have the ability to reply to each comment and replies will appear directly beneath the original comment. When a patient comment appears, an automatic alert will be sent to the nominated contacts at the practice (usually the practice manager and up to two others). PCTs have provided NHS Choices with the contact details for these contacts at each practice. To reply to a comment, the practice staff member will need a login and password. When patient feedback goes live, each practice manager will receive an with a link. Clicking that link will generate the login and password details to enable responses to be made to patient comments. SAFEGUARDS A number of important safeguards will protect practices and members of staff from unwarranted threats to their reputation. These are as follows: All comments will be pre-moderated by trained staff. Comments that are racist, libellous, generally offensive or defamatory will not be allowed; Allegations of medical negligence will not pass moderation, and the authors will be referred to the official complaint channels; Individual staff (either clinical or non-clinical) cannot be named; Whilst anonymous comments are allowed, users have to provide a validated address before a comment can appear on the site; An alert button will enable practices to request removal of comments they deem to be unsuitable or offensive, pending investigation. If the moderation rules have been broken, the comment will be removed permanently. If not, it will re-appear; 4

5 Users are prohibited from using NHS Choices to campaign or make politically motivated comments; Vexatious comments are not permissible; The moderators will be able to identify multiple comments from the same ISP address. FURTHER INFORMATION If you require any further information about any aspect of practice feedback, please contact 5

6 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. When will patient feedback start? A. During October Each practice will receive an to confirm when the system has gone live Q. Why is NHS Choices doing this? A. In a modern, taxpayer funded NHS it is right that people have the opportunity to comment on the services they receive. Patient feedback is an important source of information which, in conjunction with other practice details on such as the available treatments, clinics and facilities, can help patients choose the right practice for them and their families. It is also an important source of information for practices to assess their current service and if necessary how and where to make changes. Q. Won t it just serve people with a grievance or those who simply want to moan? A. The evidence from two years worth of patient feedback on hospitals suggests not. 75% of the 15,000 comments contain positive comments. GPs enjoy very high levels of satisfaction with the public and we expect this to be reflected in feedback on NHS Choices. Q. Did NHS Choices consult with GP professional and representative groups? A. Yes. All the main GP organisations, along with patient groups, have been consulted. The BMA s General Practitioner Committee have helped us to draft the questions and develop the moderation rules. Q. You say that patients will not be able to name individual GPs and other staff, but what about single-handed practices? A. All comments are pre-moderated to ensure that nothing malicious, libellous or defamatory will appear on the site. Because all comments will be read and checked before they appear, we can ensure that unfair threats to a doctor s reputation are avoided. Comments about a practice with three or less GPs will be flagged to each moderator who will undertake an additional check before passing it. Q. How do I change my contact for alerts e.g. if our current practice manager leaves? A. Simply contact our GP service desk on and give them the details of the new contact. 6