by Paul
5. December 2011 17:49
So GPs don’t like on-line feedback. At least that’s what a report in yesterday's Observer said. At Patient Opinion we were particularly interested in this as we are just beginning to pilot how the PO system could be used with ‘consenting’ Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) who have asked us to put their GP services on the system as well as using us to inform their commissioning decisions.
The article was based on figures released by NHS Choices which showed that over the last 2 years 28,000 people have posted comments about their general practice via the NHS Choices service. Some 2,000 of these were not published because they did not meet the editorial policy whilst the same number – 2,000 – of responses from staff had to be withdrawn because they were deemed to increase rather than decrease disagreement between the parties.
From our point of view both figures are extraordinarily large. At Patient Opinion we would expect to have to removed very many fewer stories (around 3 per 10,000 stories) due to swearing, profanity or racist comments. And whilst we don’t prohibit NHS responses, and certainly recognise that in many instances they are woefully inadequate, ones that are aggressive enough to make us think about asking them to be taken down are vanishingly rare.
So what is going on? An obvious answer is that general practice is just starting out on its learning curve about how to handle negative comments on line. But perhaps it is also the case that practices feel more strongly precisely because they sit in their communities and the relationship with patients is – or at least feels – different to them? And last but not least GPs of course have long had trhe option to ‘throw patients off the list’ as a last resort. So maybe this lowers the threshold for them being less courteous on-line.
Interestingly the very early results from our pilot with practices although showing many positive stories also has a significant number of negative ones – accompanied by some very good, sensible responses. So maybe another key variable is when websites are explicit about working with professionals rather than doing to them, as perhaps NHS Choices does
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