31.07.13
Friends and Family test uncovers ‘home truths’
Thirty-six hospital wards around England would not be recommended by patients to their friends and family based on the treatment they received there, new feedback shows – but the overall results from the Friends and Family test have been very positive.
Critics have attacked the test is overly simplistic, and have noted that some wards saw a low response rate, making results less reliable and not statistically significant.
About 400,000 people who stayed overnight in hospital or visited an A&E department over April, May and June answered the Friends and Family question, and the vast majority of patients were ‘likely’ or ‘extremely likely’ to recommend the wards they visited.
Only one A&E department out of 144, Chase Farm Hospital, received a negative score.
Prime minister David Cameron said: “I am determined to give patients a far greater voice within the NHS as a way of highlighting the best and worst of care within our hospitals. With the 'Friends and Family' test, we now have a single measure that looks at the quality of care across the country.”
Tim Kelsey, NHS England's director of patients and information, said: “From this first publication, we can see a significant and real variation in the quality of customer services across the NHS.
“There are home truths here and everyone will expect those trusts who have large numbers of their patients choosing not to recommend their services to respond as quickly as possible.
“Low response rates can have a dramatically disproportionate impact on scores. As more and more patients respond, the data will become more and more robust.”
Lord Phil Hunt, shadow health minister, added: “It is vital that patients are able to give their views on what is happening in hospitals across the country. But it is also important that the results are balanced and meaningful.
“The Government needs to improve the response rates from patients, but it also needs to publish the underlying data so that proper judgements can be made on the performance of hospitals.”
Jocelyn Cornwell, director of the Point of Care Foundation, an independent charity working with health and social care organisations, said: “Collecting feedback is really important, but I think the question patients are asked doesn't make sense. Some hospitals were using much better methods of collecting feedback. But they've had to abandon what they were doing and replace it with this rather blunt instrument.”
David Worskett, chief executive of NHS Partners Network said: “These figures are a strong validation of the qualities independent providers can bring to NHS care when they are allowed to.
“This supports the view we have always taken that patient experience is a good proxy for other factors that are harder to measure and the Secretary of State is indeed right to be pressing for the widest possible implementation of the friends and family test.”
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