Brilliant Ideas: Patient Opinion

Charmian Love

January 19, 2010

I’ve been fortunate that my experience with the NHS has been quite limited since I moved to the UK. That said, one can’t ignore the stories that seem to permeate dinner party conversations, twitter feeds and the pages of the newspaper that slam the service provision of the UK National Health System. OK – so there are inevitably problems – but where are the solutions?

Solutions is what Patient Opinion is all about. I first met Paul Hodgkin at a dinner I was invited to crash. He is a GP with a clear desire to make the system better for people. He works with a terrific team, including James Munro, who shares his GP background and also has a flair for technology.

Together they have built an organisation that allows patients to have a voice when it comes to their healthcare. It boils down to storytelling.

There are three key kinds of messages that pass through the patient opinion portal:

1. People can share their thoughts on the service and standards of local hospitals, hospices and mental health services.

2. They can also share the story of what happened to them or their family when they were ill.

3. Most important of all patients and carers can tell it like it is – patients and carers know what the service was like and come up with lots of great ideas about how it could be better.

What makes this a truly brilliant idea is that it is about communicating solutions. People who have had experiences which can help uncover service improvements are connected to people who can implement them. The stories are posted through the Patient Opinion website and then forwarded via RSS feed to the relevant hospital manager or carer to act on.

Brilliant!

For more information on Patient Opinion, check out their website.