Formic Launches Patient Experience Whitepaper

Putting the Patient at the Centre of the NHS. 

Formic looks at how the NHS can meet the challenge of providing openness, transparency and comparability of information to the patient, with the launch of a new Whitepaper.

“At present, PROMs, other outcome measures, patient experience surveys and national Clinical Audit are not used widely enough.  We will expand their validity, collection and use.”

These are the words of the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, in his 2010 Whitepaper for the NHS.  He goes on to say that more widespread use of patient experience surveys and real-time feedback will be encouraged, and that patients will be able to rate services and clinical departments according to the quality of care they have received.  Hospitals will have to be more open and accountable about mistakes and staff feedback will play an important role in making improvements to the quality of patient care.

Patient experience and patient outcomes monitoring is closely related to clinical audit, and can be part of a clinical audit, alongside other measurements of the patient experience as a whole.  Programmes such as these seek to improve not just treatment outcomes but also the patient’s overall experience.

These projects can collect a lot of information, including physiological, medical and personal information, which, in many NHS Trusts, is held in multiple clinical databases.  The programmes also measure survival rates and the physical improvement of the patient.  Various results are often adjusted according to the ‘case mix’ so that reliable evidence can be made available for clinicians, managers, patients and the general public.

The area of monitoring treatments, feedback and the setting and achieving of clinical audit and patient experience objectives will becom of increasing focus for NHS Trusts.  Whilst most Trusts already have teams in plac that are experienced in clinical audit and statistical analysis, these have been predominantly focussed on gathering information from internal clinical sources.  The switch in emphasis toward patient experience feedback will mean that they now have to put in place the methods and processes for obtaining this information in volume, whilst ensuring its quality.  Given the financial constraints that are likely to apply to these teams, they will need to find innovative ways of doing this, rather than apply those traditionally used.

Of course the success of any patient experience evaluation is only made possible with accurate and up to date information.  Technology can play an ever-increasing role in making information more efficient and more reliable. 

Formic recognises the importance of the changes outlined in the Government’s White Paper and our experience has led us to believe that accurate, efficient and cost-effective information capture, management and sharing, will soon play a critical role as an enabling factor for many of the changes outlined.

Find out more.