Most patients happy with hospital care

pharmafile | February 15, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing NHS, hospital, patient survey 

A new survey has found that the vast majority of NHS patients receiving outpatient hospital care are happy with the service.

The 2011 Patient Experience Outpatient Survey included patients aged 16 or older who had an outpatient appointment during April and May 2011.

A full 84% of the 72,000 respondents from 163 acute NHS Trusts were broadly happy with the care they received, rating their experience as excellent or very good.

However most patients were unhappy with the way hospitals communicate with them. Two thirds were not told how long they would have to wait for an appointment and only 65% of patients said they knew what would happen when they were seen by a doctor.

Advertisement

Public health minister Anne Milton said: “It is simply not acceptable that 16% of people with long term conditions or illnesses were not asked what was important to them in managing their condition, and 17% felt their appointment had not helped them to better manage it.”

At the same time, intriguing findings from new research published by Imperial College London suggest that patients’ opinions of hospitals may be quite an accurate measure of their objective performance.

Since 2008 people have been able to post comments and ratings on the NHS Choices website, in the same way as they might rate a holiday or hotel on other consumer sites. 

Looking at 10,274 ratings of all NHS acute hospital trusts in England on NHS Choices posted in 2009 and 2010, researchers found that hospitals with better patient ratings tend to have lower death rates and lower readmission rates.

In much the same way, those establishments rated by patients as being cleaner have lower rates of MRSA infections.

“There are a lot of data available to the public on hospital performance, but people rarely use conventional measures and often find them difficult to understand,” said Dr Felix Greaves from the university’s School of Public Health. 

“Our results suggest that NHS Choices ratings may provide useful and relevant information for patients making choices about their care,” he added.

Adam Hill

Related Content

A community-first future: which pathways will get us there?

In the final Gateway to Local Adoption article of 2025, Visions4Health caught up with Julian …

The Pharma Files: with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust

Pharmafile chats with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, about …

Is this an Oppenheimer moment for the life sciences industry?

By Sabina Syed, Managing Director at Visions4Health In the history of science, few initiatives demonstrate …

The Gateway to Local Adoption Series

Latest content