Freedom of Information Request – Ref: FOI 039-2023
Thank you for your recent Freedom of Information request. Please find our response below: 1. Is there a specific system to measure outpatient experience in your Trust? We welcome all feedback from patients and carers and this is mostly done in three ways. a. The Friends and Family Test is sent to all patients on discharge, unless there is a good reason not to do so for example, where there are safeguarding or safety issues.. Patient experience is measured against three key metrics and reported through a number of internal governance structures and shared with the Trust Board. The key metrics are:
• Did you feel you were treated with respect and dignity? • Were you involved as much as you wanted to be in decisions about your care and treatment? • Did you feel the service was delivered safely and protected your welfare? b. Through feedback received by the Patient and Carer Experience Team including Patient Advice and Liaison Services. we are able to identify themes and respond proactively to emerging trends across compliments, complaints and concerns. Patient experience is reported through internal governance structures and shared with the Trust Board.
c. Focus groups, supported by our ‘Experts by lived Experience’ run throughout the year in relation to a number of workstreams and potential projects. Services sometimes also share bespoke surveys, which provide intelligence around a particular proposal or issue. These are managed in line with the Trust’s IT Information Security Policy. We also attend events across the county to promote and encourage patient experience feedback.
Feedback is not outpatient specific, as learning is not typically exclusive to one service and can often apply across inpatient and outpatient settings; however, it is reported by service and directorate i.e. it can be measured in isolation if required.. 2. Does your Trust use the NHS Patient Experience Framework themes to measure and record patient experience?
The NHS Patient Experience Framework themes of leadership, organisational culture, compassionate care, safe staffing levels, consistent incident reporting and learning lessons are central to delivering good patient experience; however, we do not specifically record patient feedback against them. Instead, the Trust’s approach is to work with the patient to fully understand the issues the patient wishes to raise and measure against that. For example, we may have had safe staffing levels on a ward when a concern was raised; however, if that patient felt that his care was compromised because there were not enough staff available, it is important that we respond and record the details appropriately.
3. Is there an easily accessible place for the public to review on your website your patient experience reports? not just within published board papers.
Whilst patients can share their experiences with us via our website, we do not currently have anywhere on our site for the public to view our patient experience reports. However, the website is undergoing a refresh to make it more accessible and there are plans for a patient experience page to enable patients and carers to review feedback.
Offline, patient experience feedback is shared with all of our team leads to display on public facing noticeboards. This includes an easy-read word-cloud, which highlights the feedback received from patients and carers over the past month. 4. How are these outpatient experience reports used for continuous improvement within your Trust? Representatives from across the Trust join a weekly Learning Opportunities Group to identify and action potential opportunities for improvement. The group includes members of the Patient and Carer Experience Team, Patient Safety Team, Duty of Candour Lead, CQC Quality Manager and QI Team, amongst others. The Patient and Experience Team also meets with Service Directors and Quality Leads on a monthly basis to discuss new and ongoing opportunities for improvement. Oversight is provided by the Trust’s Improving Care and Quality Assurance Groups.
FOI Request
The NHSE South West Outpatient Transformation Programme, Patient Reference Group PRG. consists of 31 patient volunteers with lived experience of outpatient services in the last two years. The group has representatives from each of the 7 ICS’s across the South West. The key purpose of the PRG is to support the NHSE Outpatient Transformation Programme to deliver user centric transformation initiatives that are co-designed in partnership, with a focus on improving patient experience and tackling inequalities in access to outpatient services in the South West.
1-year interim report
Towards the end of 2022 the PRG produced the 1-year interim report, a report by the Patient Reference Group Chair & Vice Chair on the group's findings of patient experience in outpatient services in the South West and service user involvement over their first year. A key finding is that they could not find any published patient experience surveys on any outpatient services across the South West. This is surprising given that Patient Experience is increasingly recognised as one of the three pillars of quality in healthcare alongside clinical effectiveness and patient safety. To get a further understanding as to why there is an absence of published patient experience data, we have decided to reach out to each NHS trust and make an FoI request for the following
Would you please support our evidence-gathering process with answers to the following questions?
1 Is there a specific system to measure outpatient experience in your Trust?
2. Does your Trust use the NHS Patient Experience Framework themes to measure and record patient experience?
3. Is there an easily accessible place for the public to review on your website your patient experience reports? not just within published board papers.
4. How are these outpatient experience reports used for continuous improvement within your Trust?
If you would like to learn more about how we are involving patients and those with lived experience, please contact the South West Outpatient Transformation Programme england.swoutpatientstransf@nhs.net
Thank you for helping us to gather evidence on how NHS trusts collect and use patient experience to improve services.