If you havn't yet seen it, our director James Munro wrote a great peice for The Guardian this morning. It's a gentle but optimistic warning about the problems the Government might encounter as they bring in a ratings system for care homes. Worth a read, even if we do say so ourselves.

James' peice for The Guardian - "Beware of the pitfalls of rating care homes" (15/12/2011)

I went with a family member to a non-urgent ultra-sound at our local teaching hospital last week. The appointment was part of an extra session run on a Saturday morning and it was great they had organised it. But – perhaps because it was a non-routine Saturday morning - the system at the clinic was chaotic and we ended up waiting more than 90 minutes. We fumed about how what we needed was an iPhone app so we could tell Patient Opinion how bad their system was right there and then.

But when it was all over an interesting thing happened. ‘So you’re going to tell them how lousy their booking system is on Patient Opinion right?’ I asked. To which the answer was ‘No, of course not!’

Unpicking this it became clear that frustration had quickly transmuted into gratitude and loyalty. And I realised that this was a good thing. Having an app to fire off about our immediate frustrations would in the end have left my companion feeling worse, not better, about the NHS – and that it is not in her long term interest.

So what we need to do is to recognise that people feel a whole range of things about their care and that gratitude, loyalty and desire not to bite the hand the cares for you are as important as frustration, anger and disappointment. What we at Patient Opinion need to do is to find a way to help people to share the totality of their experiences. To make sharing suggestions for improvement an essential part of being loyal and grateful.

I have just had my first experience of the NHS Scotland Event - it was a surprising couple of days!  With a load of NHS Scotland bigwigs in the same auditorium I expected to hear about the 'challenging financial climate', that we should 'do more with less', and the key would be 'improvement', 'measurement', 'productivity'...and I wasn't disappointed: they were all there with bells on!

However, 'compassion', 'care', and 'empathy' also featured prominently, perhaps even more so - what a relief!  Were there even lessons to be learned from the Disney Corporation?  Will we ever call patients 'guests'?

It shouldn't be so surprising but it was reassuring that senior health service staff and government officials are placing these fundamental values front and centre.  As so many Patient Opinion stories, convey, the absence of these values can make the difference between a good experience and a bad one, aside from any clinical intervention.

I came away remembering a quote from the film, 'Patch Adams', "treat the disease, you'll win some, you'll lose some.  Treat the person, you'll always win."

It's a great sentiment; it's been around a few years now!  However, not sure if it can quite compete with the Acting Director of NHS Scotland quoting Lady Gaga!  Apparently, the NHS is Scotland is "on the Edge of Glory"?  How exciting!

Today a damming report was issued by the NHS Ombudsman in which it pulled no punches in its opinion of the standards of NHS care for the elderly. The report outlined 10 particular cases where it said that the complaints it received were "harrowing" and the ultimate conclusion was that many of the elderly were denied the "most basic" of human needs. Ms Abraham, the reports publisher, warned that these were not simply isolated one off cases and that the NHS required a deep reform of its attitudes regarding the care of the elderly. Should you wish to view the full report is available here:>>>>

Part of this reform, in her opinion was the requirement for a more consistent approach to complaints handling. She was critical of the fact that it required great tenacity to see a complaint either through the system, or ultimately to the Ombudsmen. The first stage of any complaint is generally channelled through the local health trust or the GP practice.  She acknowledged that this often leads to a dead end and that many simply gave up on their complaint. "it's just so extraordinary when you think of so many organisations who would think that that kind of feedback was gold dust when it comes to improving their services." She often heard complainants who simply said "It's not worth speaking up, nothing ever changes"

At Patient Opinion we are all aware that the more independent opinion is deemed to be - the more valuable (and more likely it is to be taken seriously) it is to all concerned. Earlier today in a routine check on our web statistics I noticed a particular visit from a NHS trust using the search string "XXXX (the name of the hospital) complaints". Being somewhat curious I followed the link from the web tracker and saw exactly what pages were being visited. The hospital representative was of course checking out stories of their own hospital on the Patient Opinion site. It would be correct to say that of the stories posted on our site not all were complimentary. In fact, more than 50% of the most recent stories were all concerns that were critical. I decided to follow through and visit the hospitals own site and took a glance at the feedback / stories page. The trust painted a very rosy picture with not one of the stories critical - yet switch to our site and you saw a very different view from the patients and users of the services at this hospital.

Now I suppose it would be somewhat odd for hospitals and trusts to allow the posting of critical stories on their own website, perhaps a bit like a turkey voting for Xmas! Then of course one would wonder if patients and relatives would be reluctant and wary of posting negative experiences direct on a trust or hospital website, according to Ms Abrahams they probably wouldn't consider it worthwhile! That is where services like Patient Opinions' or even NHS Choices, to a lesser extent, come into their own as it encourages people to leave feedback anonymously with no interaction with the hospital required.

Now the purpose here is to not necessarily play on negatives, in fact a large majority of stories on Patient Opinion are indeed "thankyou" and "well dones", it is important for the health service to know when it is performing well, just as much as when it isn't. However to gain a true and rounded view of a hospital one does need to escape from the official line and here is of course the value of independently categorised feedback and opinion.

Perhaps Ms Abraham might like to give us a call!