Responding to Feedback – Patient Connect

Captive Health and Birmingham Women’s Hospital NHS Trust are Finalists for Measuring, Reporting and Acting on feedback at the 2014 PENNA Awards.

“I like giving feedback. It shows someone is listening”

Michelle Walsh, Head of Quality, Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust

Aim and vision

In 2014, the Birmingham Women’s Hospital commissioned two modules of the new software: a patient-facing smartphone App plus an integrated patient feedback solution through Captive Health’s new Patient Connect software suite to replace the existing provision that was deemed to provide poor value for money.

The core aims of the project were:

To make patient feedback more accessible
To create a new space that patients choose to access regularly
To promote patient involvement in new ways
To automate processes, reducing cost
To save money on annual license fees
To build a platform for further development as needs arise in future

Rationale & Context

In addition to replacing an out dated feedback solution, Birmingham Women’s Hospital were keen to respond to the growing trend of smartphone apps increasingly becoming a vital part of communicating with patients. For example:

60% of the UK population now have a smartphone (this has been increasing 10% year on year)
80% of browsing time on smartphones is on Apps rather than browsers
This signals that people like to personalise the digital world around their preferences

Working together, staff at the Trust and the team at Captive Health researched what patients and staff wanted from such a product. From this research it emerged that:

Patients have low expectations of digital provision from NHS providers
Staff and patients alike welcomed the idea of using the smartphone to promote services
Accessibility and mapping was a gap for many patients who find the site and physical layout confusing
Key touchpoints are in face to face consultations with clinicians
Ward staff provide an invaluable touchpoint in the customer journey
The main reason people wish to take part in surveys is for the purposes of improving services for others

The project team then developed objectives for the implementation, which was then provided by Captive Health for the Trust.

Solutions

Patient Connect helps target users of health services with accurate and relevant healthcare information. It also uses the smartphone as an additional platform for capturing feedback in a personalised way.

“The solution enables us to filter online resources in a user-friendly way for our patients, providing relevant health literacy videos, tailored social media feeds, links to approved health literature, signposting to user groups, booking for antenatal classes, as well as the ability to provide feedback on the specific service used, close the feedback loop and promote choice and accountability both internally and externally.”

Amy Maclean, Head of Patient Experience, Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust

The finished product is maintained by the Trust from the Patient Connect online Control Panel and includes the following functionality:

Service directory and interactive maps
Patient feedback with integrated real-time reporting
Geo boundaries allowing the smartphone’s GPS trigger push notifications such as a welcome message on entering the site
News feed with links to twitter and video feeds

Click here to learn more about the key features.

The App integrates fully with the Patient Feedback software and the solution offers a completely unique multi-method data capture mechanism fully integrated into the smartphone app. Unlike any other solution, the system:

Uses CRM technology to manage respondents, enabling the Trust to release an unlimited number of surveys, each respondent to see only the surveys assigned to them
Offers an innovative method for realtime reporting, service by service, so that patients can see what other people say about their service. This is a feature within the App, and online
Automates the process of publishing accurate data ward by ward and service by service each month, so that this requires zero staff time.
Starts where patients are at, providing them with highly accessible information in a totally new space for public involvement.
Enables in-depth analysis of feedback, providing new insights.

Results

Birmingham Women’s Hospital have reported

Increased efficiency (by automating data manipulation and dissemination) thus creating savings for the public purse.
Improved quality, by bringing customer insight fully into the range of quality metrics and results measures available to the trust.
Ensuring that team by team, the staff know what they have to do to improve.
Increased transparency, by presenting highly accessible, real-time data to the und customer (closing the feedback loop)
Increased patient choice, by presenting data in a format that makes it comparable across NHS providers, to assist patients in selecting the best provider. In so doing, acts as a driver of positive change for each service manager.
Increased accountability, by ensuring this key outcomes data is accessible to the mangers of each service through automated and personalised reporting.
Reduce dependence on costly outside suppliers by maintaining content through browser-based content management systems that sit behind each product.

Since go-live in July 2014 users have completed some 5,000 sessions in the App and some 20,000 responses have been captured in the feedback solution.

Learning points

This innovation is now available from Captive Health as an ‘off the shelf’ solution. It can be implemented by any Trust in 4-6 weeks and represents extremely good value for money. Tips for a successful implementation include:

Involve stakeholders early in the project.
Use your comms team, design team and IT colleagues well. They don’t need to be involved but it really helps.
Get Exec support for the project.
Expect good value from external suppliers.
Be prepared for an interesting journey, and be creative along the way!

The project underpins and symbolises our commitment to a culture of patient centred care.

Success has been due to the extent to which we have listened to and involved patients and staff in the project, the strong creative partnership between the Trust and Captive Health as a provider, and the strong commitment from the top of the organisation.

See for yourself

The team at Captive Health will be very happy to provide more information. Please contact us for a free online demo.

Multimedia

[one_half]Patients and staff react to the solution:

[/one_half] [one_half_last]Launch materials:

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