What do patients think of your local hospital?

Today, for the first time, NHS Midlands and East, the Strategic Health Authority, has published the results of a new hourly survey that shows what recent patients think of their local hospital services. Over 22,000 patients from the 46 Acute Hospitals across the east of England and the East and West Midlands were asked at the end of their treatment, “how likely is it that you would recommend this service to friends and family?”

Today, their answers are being released, hospital by hospital. The results show a wide difference between hospitals, highlighting those hospitals that need to do more and those from which they could learn. The average score across the region is +62, but individual hospital scores range from +29 to +89, a 60 point difference between hospitals at the top and bottom. The scores are worked out simply. Take the number who say no, from the number who say yes, and you get a score known as a net promoter score.

The net number is based on the percentage of promoters, take away the percentage of detractors. The score for NNUH is 65.

Anna Dugdale, Chief Executive of NNUH said:

“We have been gathering patient feedback for some time to enable us to respond by making improvements to our services. In the last few months we have increased the scale of our patient surveys to make them even more representative and we now survey more than 10% of inpatients. The Net Promoter Score question regarding whether a patient would recommend our service to their friends or family is the frist question on our surveys.

“The feedback that comes through is incredibly helpful in assisting NNUH drive its improvements to services and several projects are underway including making certain items of hospital equipment quieter to reduce disturbance to patients at night and proactively offering a variety of fruit to patients from dedicated fruit trolleys at mealtimes. NNUH, with Serco, is also developing a project on customer service training for ward catering staff.

“Other strands of work will be developed to address any emerging themes and concerns from the feedback and we are grateful to have it so that we can continuously drive up standards and improve the patient experience.”