People's Service User Experiences - Feb 2019

This month’s (February 2019) report has highlighted various themes some of which are highlighted below:

High volumes of positive feedback in terms of approaches to patients generally providing person focussed and friendly atmospheres at many of the services listed in the report, this covered both primary, secondary and community care.  We would hope that these items are shared with the relevant organisations and staff.

We noted a number of items related to the availability and delivery of care assessments prior to or post hospital care or as part of ongoing care needs within a community setting. 

We noted that the responses shared were conflicting in terms of positive and negative experiences and would be interested to understand the dynamics of how care assessments are rolled out; where the challenges are and what is proactively being done to address any inconsistencies.

We regularly note that third party intervention is often required before patient needs are finally addressed, we would like to know why this is the case and how patient and provider approaches to problem solving can be improved.

Patient choice is commonly raised within experiences received.  Examples within this report see patients waiting weeks for blood tests at GP practices and patients not being offered or made aware that they access tests elsewhere (hospital walk-ins for example), also noted was putting the patient at the centre when accessing services when the nearest might not be the most accessible, this was the case within this report where a patient wishing to access assessment and diagnosis was given a location which was inaccessible to them, but the patient was keen to access services elsewhere but this option was not made available to them.

The points raised above are a sample of the themes that have emerged and should not be considered as the whole content of the report.