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June 2, 2006

Version 2 goes live

We've just released Version 2.0 of Patient Opinion. For patients this means that we can handle comments about mental health better than before and the site is easier to search.

For trusts Version 2.0 brings much bigger improvements - it is much easier to set up RSS feeds that direct postings of interest to the right manager or doctor. And it is also much easier for trusts to respond to postings.

Quite a few hospitals are already responding but so far this is mainly to critical postings - I hope that soon hospitals will start responding to some of the many positive postings "It's great to hear that you had a positive experience in our A&E Department last week. This will mean a lot to the staff as it happens that there were two members of staff of sick that week too. Thank you!"

One of the things that we did not expect when we set up Patient Opinion was how much it would evolve public conversations about detailed aspects of a trust's services. In some ways these conversations are a new form of micro-democracy - users and providers can have useful, short, public discussions that explain the detail and complexity that often lies behind any improvement in the service.

Posted by Paul at June 2, 2006 4:21 PM