29.08.12
Bottom of the league
Following the Government’s release of the annual cancer patient experience survey, Macmillan Cancer Support has published a league table of trusts to demonstrate their performance in delivering quality cancer care.
This allows public pressure to build on those trusts languishing at the bottom, particularly if this is where they have been for some time. Such scrutiny could incentivise patients to flex their choice and attend different trusts. It could also make the trusts in question take some time to consider how they could improve their reputation.
Because it is not just the care they provide which is the key issue; rather, it is how patients feel they have been treated. In this, everything comes down to perception, not the cold hard facts of performance.
Experience surveys are therefore much harder to excel in, but this does mean that their results should be taken as seriously as other formal measures of success.
Tell us what you think – have your say below, or email us directly at [email protected]