July 4, 2006

Patient Opinion debuts at the PMDU

Today we presented our experience to date in developing Patient Opinion to the good folk of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, along with some from DirectGov too.

And as you might expect, we got asked some very thoughtful questions. For example: This looks good - but which patients does it exclude? And which providers? Does it really change how people make choices? And does it really change services? And could it change policy too? If so, how?

Whew! Good questions. And rather difficult to answer - early days, and all that. But we feel the signs that PO could change services, and help patients, and perhaps even affect policy, are there. We feel optimistic - so long as we can achieve a much larger scale of use than we have to date - that PO will have a tangible, and even measurable, impact on health services and patients. We'll certainly be looking for evidence of that impact as we develop the service further.

Posted by James at 8:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 3, 2006

We're off to see the wizards

Tomorrow we are off to London talk to the high-flying civil servants of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit.

Our brief is to say something about what we have learned (so far) from Patient Opinion about generating citizen feedback on public services via the web.

Naturally, we're excited. And maybe a little nervous too. After all, we feel like we have learned a lot in the past year or so - but we know there is a lot still to learn about how to do this. And, although we've thought a great deal about getting feedback on health services, we have thought a lot less about how this might translate to other public services.

For example, could or should there be a PupilOpinion, a PassengerOpinion, or even an InmateOpinion? We don't know. But it will be interesting to see what the great minds at PMDU make of Patient Opinion, so far.

You can get an idea what we've learned from our PowerPoint presentation, here.

And we'll tell you how it went, tomorrow.

Posted by James at 3:54 PM | Comments (0)

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 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 28, 2005

Demos Greenhouse: Risking it

Interesting piece from Demos about choosing hospitals: Demos Greenhouse: Risking it:

"researchers ... found that the best hospitals actually tended to report more mistakes, which of course allowed them to learn from those mistakes and steadily improve"

Is this true? Certainly more honesty sounds better than covering up mistakes, but do people always make 'logical' decisions about their care?

Posted by Lee at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2005

Try saying sorry, NHS doctors told

Try saying sorry, NHS doctors told, reports the Observer this weekend. Interesting stuff, but what about patients saying thank you where appropriate as well. That is something that Patient Opinion is trying to encourage as well as moans and complaints.

Can both approaches co-exist, and can they help foster a more personal, human relationship between doctors and patients in the NHS?

Posted by Lee at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack