The importance of patient experience and its measurement have been embedded into heal
th policy and organisational standards. We now have a national standard (Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care - Standard No.2) that focuses on involving consumers in their care, and measuring their experience of services.
There are many ways in which to measure patient experience. Often it is achieved through patient surveys, suggestion boxes, complaint and compliment systems, interviews, and focus groups. But if you think about it, these methods are based on the organisation’s needs, not necessarily the needs of patients and their carers.
When we first commenced Patient Opinion in Australia in 2012, I recall receiving a phone call from a hospital CEO who asked that we direct our story-tellers to contact their Consumer Liaison Officer, rather than encouraging them to write on our site. I’m sure these patients were aware that they could get in touch with the hospital, but rather chose to write about their experience on an independent and anonymous site for whatever their personal reason.
Such an encounter like this raised within me a number of thoughts. Is patient feedback for the benefit of the service, or is it for the benefit of the patient to communicate to the service (which may of course have benefits for the service)? Why should the patient engage on the organisation’s terms and not on their own terms?
One of the criticisms we receive sometimes at Patient Opinion is that the hospital needs to know the identity of the story-teller, otherwise there is nothing they can do about the ‘feedback’. That seems odd when you think about it. Health services could respond to their concern in the first instance, by simply acknowledging the person’s experience. If it involved an issue such as waiting for too long in the A&E department without any communication (www.patientopinion.org.au/opinions/60911), surely there is something that the hospital could do to rectify this without knowing who told the story.
The traditional model for organisations when engaging with their patients tends to be one where the patient is seen as ‘feedback’. This is an organisation-centric view. What Patient Opinion does is invite organisations and patients to enter into a different kind of relationship. It’s more about connecting with the patient, rather than just seeing them as ‘feedback’. So in this sense it is about building community, where the organisation demonstrates that they are listening and responding to patient stories, and hopefully demonstrating real-time improvement. And it’s where patients will feel safe in sharing their story rather than thinking they may be branded a trouble-maker or ‘odd’ when they wish to communicate with the organisation (anonymously).
The challenge for health organisations is to find ways of re-educating the public that they want to hear from them, not just for ‘feedback’ purposes such as meeting KPIs or fulfilling a mandate, but because they want the patient to have the opportunity to comment on their experience in a safe, anonymous and independent way.
Patient Opinion was established to foster this new kind of relationship between services and their patients. What we need is for services to not only provide organisation-centric ways of engagement, but to encourage patients to tell their story in a safe environment without fear of retribution or being branded ‘trouble-makers’. Patients are ready for this type of interaction, but will services engage?
Is patient feedback undertaken for the organisation’s sake or for the benefit of the patient?
Is patient feedback undertaken for the organisation’s sake or for the benefit of the patient? https://www.careopinion.org.au/resources/blog-resources/1-files/mg4.jpg Care Opinion +617 3354 4525 https://www.careopinion.org.au /content/au/images/logos/co-header-logo-2020-default.pngQuestion from Care Opinion Australia
Posted by Michael Greco, Co-Founder, Care Opinion Australia, on
Response from Daris on 20 Jul 2015 at 1:51 PM
Hi Micheal, I enjoyed your article. Having worker in a large public hospital, I would also like to comment that feedback received from patients through consumer liaison is often focused on a negative experience. I believe that there needs to be clearer and open communication about what people expect from their health service and what the health service is able to provide. The pressure on public health is unsustainable from both a financial, workforce and resource point of view. The fact that most people use this service when facing a major health crisis adds to the difficulty in how we can best manage expectations and reality during this emotionally laden time. While people do say thank you and buy chocolates for staff the informality of this feedback is not seen or 'counted'. I believe that fewer people are motivated to go the extra mile by thanking a service compared with people who feel angry or dissapointed and wish to follow a more formal approach. I wonder if patient opinion data is shared ( equal negative to positive both in the UK and here in Australia).
Response from Michael Greco, Co-Founder, Care Opinion Australia on 10 Aug 2015 at 1:03 PM
Thanks for your response. Our data shows that we receive pretty much an equal split between positive and negative postings, both here in Australia and in the UK. I think the main reason for this is that our subscribing organisations promote the site right across their services, so that they begin to hear not just from those during an emotional laden time.
What is encouraging to see is when an organisation says "your story helps us do our job better". Now that sends a message that we really want to hear from you because it helps us.
People will want to thank a service when they know they will be heard and acknowledged. In one way, it's a bit similar to being 'liked' on facebook when you know there are people listening. But Patient Opinion is more about a therapeutic type of connection, because of the unique space of healthcare.
Response from Rachael on 11 Aug 2015 at 9:01 AM
Thanks for this article. My take-away from researching how health consumer voices were heard in three public engagement forums known as citizens' juries, is that maybe we need to move from talking about patient's "stories" and "storytelling" and accept that what they are speaking about is based on their own empirical evidence. They are giving us empirical evidence from the field based on their own experience.
Sometimes, yes, what has been perceived by a patient as an overly long wait, may be because they didn't understand how triage works, but sometimes, what patients are telling us, from their own empirical experience at one end of the chain, is how things are really going on the ground, as opposed to protocols, manuals and reams of statistics.
Response from Michael Greco, Co-Founder, Care Opinion Australia on 11 Aug 2015 at 12:15 PM
Thanks Rachel for your insights. We agree that there is legitimacy in patient stories. See James Munro's blog. The more we can connect with those stories, such as through an online patient engagement platform, the better we will understand what it's like to be a patient in our health services. This is more than just collecting data (which is important) but the problem with this approach is that it tends to be in the interests of the organisation, and not necessarily the patient. What stories do is bring that connection and engagement between the patients and the service providers.