Celebrating a milestone in patient feedback as Healthwatch turns 4!
This April sees Healthwatch Birmingham celebrate our 4th Birthday and we are delighted to announce a milestone achievement in patient feedback received.
Over 1200 experiences of local health and social care services have been shared by patients and the public across Birmingham. The growth in feedback is enabling us to do more to promote and champion the patient and public voice, ensuring experiences are being used to improve services.
In the past year alone, over 500 experiences have been shared just through our Feedback Centre and Information and Signposting Line. Such routes are providing simple ways for people to tell us about the care they receive and an important tool for capturing trends in patient feedback. As a result, Healthwatch Birmingham is increasingly taking action. We are using experiences to shape our investigations, challenging services to improve and involve patients in decision making and encouraging service providers to respond to feedback. We are also sharing trends with those that commission and regulate services.
From Andy Cave, Chief Executive Officer: “This marks an important period for Healthwatch Birmingham and we are delighted to reach such a milestone. The whole team would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to share their experiences with us. As we celebrate our 4th Birthday, we are listening to more and more citizens across Birmingham. With the complex and fast paced changes in the NHS and adult social care it’s vital we continue to encourage people to feedback and to know that their experiences matter. Feedback really is making a difference, enabling us to drive improvement and effect real change.”
Growing the quality of patient feedback
Healthwatch Birmingham’s community engagement activities and our marketing and adverting campaigns, like our work with local hospital radio, #FeedbackonFriday and our bus campaign has resulted in a large growth in experiences. Key to listening more is the hard work of our volunteers who help us in the community to raise awareness. Our reports highlight how we are using patient experience to work with the health and social care system to change and improve. Our collaborative work with third sector organisations, and the support from all three Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), has increased our ability to engage and listen to people’s views about a range of local services.
Your voice counts – share feedback
Please share your positive and negative feedback about local services by:
- Visiting our Feedback Centre and telling us about specific services.
- By emailing info@healthwatchbirmingham.co.uk
- You can feedback anonymously and confidentially.
It’s very important we hear about what is happening locally. Patient feedback is vital is helping us, and the wider health and social care system, understand where things are working well or where improvement is needed.