Would you recommend us to your friends and family?

These days it’s quite common to be asked for feedback from companies whose services you’ve used, you might get an email from Amazon asking if you were happy with your last DVD delivery, or a restaurant might give you a feedback form asking about your meal.  Here at MES we do the same sending out feedback forms to all of our clients on a regular basis.  From April this year the NHS will be expected to do the same thing.  Back in May last year the Prime Minister announced that the so-called “Friends and Family” test would be rolled out across the NHS, with a minimum of 15% patients being asked whether they would recommend the hospital ward they’d visited, or the A&E they’d been treated in to their family and friends.

As you might expect there was a lot of subsequent debate as to whether the test was of any real value.  The Royal College of Nursing welcomed the test when their Chief Executive said it was an important part of the jigsaw providing an overall picture of quality care.  On the other side of the argument was the NHS Alliance who rejected the test calling it “useless and meaningless” while the Care Quality Commission had previously stated these kind of questions weren’t appropriate to ask in the NHS setting. 

Of course asking for patient feedback is nothing new.  We’ve worked with a number of Trusts who have used the Net Promoters system to gauge patient feedback where 10% of patients are surveyed within 48 hours of being discharged from hospital.  We’re also working with GP surgeries to help them with their Patient Participation Directed Enhanced Service requirements.  In this example the first question a patient is asked is whether they would recommend the GP to a friend.

There’s no doubt that patient feedback is key to improving the care that patients receive and from April the friends and family test will be how it’s done.  If you’re interested in hearing more about the test MES will be presenting at the MemberWise conference in London in May on using the test in the NHS or you can have a read of our Friends and Family Test service profile which we’re launching today.