Midweek Message - 19 May 2021 Issue #117
Friends, family and feedback drive us forward
With cafes and restaurants, bars, gyms, cinemas and even some international travel opening up this week, I’ve been thinking about how people learn from feedback.
The service industry is particularly good at gathering feedback from customers and consumers - how many times do you recall being in a shop, restaurant, or using a call centre and being told that you'll receive the opportunity to give feedback on the service you've received? Whether it's via a high-tech personalised survey, or a request to leave a review on TrustPilot or TripAdvisor, or even a sole trader asking that you recommend them in a local Facebook group, many businesses have really grasped that the best way to secure custom is a) to ensure your customers come back again, and b) that they personally endorse your work to friends and acquaintances.
As an NHS provider which is already very busy, we're not looking to encourage "repeat custom"! We'd much rather support our local community to access timely healthcare before their needs become an emergency, so that we have capacity to treat those sickest faster. But we do know that when patients can speak positively about North Mid to their friends, relatives and other people, following their personal experience of our services, it has a genuine benefit on our Trust, our staff, and on our local community.
A good reputation locally gives people confidence that when they need our services, they will get safe, high quality, responsive, timely healthcare. It gives our staff – all of us - a boost to know that local people believe in our skills and service, and it helps us recruit and retain the very best staff. That's why we've set ourselves the goal of having the highest percentage of patients in London who recommend us a place to be treated, and that within five years, we want 19 out of 20 patients who use our services to say they would recommend us to friends and family who need the same type of care.
We know also that people who consider they've had a poor experience are more likely to be vocal about it then people who have had a good experience - this affects NHS organisations like it does most other providers of a service. So to build a truer picture of whether people recommend our services, we want to significantly increase the number of patients who complete our 'Friends and Family Test' questions.
This is a piece of work which Chief Nurse Sarah Hayes and team are leading, as part of our Patient First programme, but let me be clear - increasing patient feedback, driving up Friends and Family Test (FFT) response rates, is not the sole preserve of our nursing colleagues; it is everybody's business. It's not an easy nut to crack - otherwise we would be doing it already! But I do want us to get radically better at it, and as a result, the exec team is very open to ideas about how to take forward improvements.
If you have ideas - or ideas about how to generate ideas - please share them, either with yourdivisional leads, or direct with the exec team. You can of course always reach me at andrew.heeps@nhs.net. I look forward to being inundated with your innovations!
