Surrey and Sussex gets patient feedback

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust is implementing a patient experience system to collect feedback on its services.

The ‘Your Care Matters’ programme at East Surrey Hospital includes the Friends and Family test, which is now mandated by the government, and collects patient feedback on other issues.

It is being rolled out using customer experience management company Empathica.

Michael Wilson, chief executive of Surrey and Sussex, said the trust wanted patients to know it listened to them and would put the feedback into action.

“The thinking behind the new programme came from wanting our patients to feel that East Surrey Hospital is at the heart of their community and that we welcome their ideas to help us improve,” said Wilson.

“We wanted to move past static measures of performance to a more ‘caring’ solution that gauges our patients’ experience and most importantly, enables us to take actions based upon their views."

The system follows up the Friends and Family test question with a number of  questions which will allow them to drill down to the finer points of the patient experience.

The trust’s management team can then use the insights from the patient feedback to take action to improve patients’ experiences in the hospital.

Following a three month trial of the system across 24 inpatient wards as well as rolling it out in the hospital’s A&E, it is now being deployed in outpatients, day surgery units, endoscopy and chemotherapy.

The programme also aims to motivate staff to provide exceptional care, by using the system to flag up positive feedback to the relevant manager. This allows them to commend specific employees for their commitment to outstanding patient care.