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February 8, 2006

What should we do with very negative postings?

Some times we get very critical postings. Or postings that criticise and name a member of staff. Question is - what is the best way to deal with these?
Knowing that someone thought that 'Dr Jones was very rude and could not care less" may be useful information for other patients. Or it just may reflect that it was a bad day. Or that the patient was very distressed by what they had heard and took their anger out on the messenger - it does happen.
And for Dr Jones it won't necessarily be helpful to be named and shamed on the site.And he or she could, if it was bad enough, take Patient Opinion to court for defamation.

Our current policy for very negative postings that identify members of staff is to:
- email the poster to check they are acting in good faith
- tell them how to make a formal complauint if they want to (if they do PO does not pursue the matter further).
- forward the Opinion to the Trust but do not publish on the site.

This helps improve the service through feedback. And protects us - but is not very helpful or transparent for patients.

So we are thinking about doing several additional things to make the process clearer.
Firstly encouraging users to reformulate their opinion into a 'What could have gone better?' format rather than just being out and out critical.
Secondly deleting any thing that identifies an individual member of staff: "Dr [ ] was very rude and could not care less" and publishing the remainder.
Sending the original (with the name) through to the Trust and encouraging the Trust to post a response.
Finally allowing the original poster 100 words to comment on the Trust's reponse - and again reviewing this prior to any publication.

What do you think? Would this get the balance right?

Posted by Paul at February 8, 2006 1:25 PM