The Whittington Hospital Trust

Overview - NHS Questionnaire Case Study

The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust is an acute general teaching hospital situated in Archway in the north of Islington. It primarily serve the communities of north Islington and west Haringey, a population of approximately 300,000 people. The hospital also treats a significant number of patients from Camden, Barnet and Hackney. It has over 300 beds and employs over 2,000 staff.

Situation

With over 800,000 visitors each year and a wide variety of reasons for using the services required, it is imperative that the Whittington Hospital collects NHS Questionnaire feedback from its patients on a regular basis to ensure the quality of service provided is consistently high. Previous methods of collecting patient feedback did not result in the significant capture of opinions, and had not been as effective in engaging with all of demographic groups who utilise The Whittington.

Chris Giles, Development Manager for the Whittington Hospital comments: “The quality of service our patients receive is of high importance to us. We look to develop as an organisation on the basis of what our patients need, and we strive to secure enough quality feedback from patients about their experience with the Whittington Hospital, to truly believe we are achieving our aims.”

The Whittington Hospital required an innovative system available across the Trust, such as an NHS Questionnaire and a system to capture feedback from patients, especially those who frequent areas of the hospital with dwell e.g. out-patient areas and emergency departments.

Solution

Implementation of CRT ViewPoint Patient Feedback System.

The managed program of implementation during 2009 has ensured that the ViewPoint system from CRT is now embedded within the Whittington Hospital.

ViewPoint kiosks, tablet PCs and online surveys now capture patient feedback along each patient’s journey, successfully giving access to a broader group of patients than has previously been possible.

A high volume of data is filtered using Valid8™* and multi-level reports are enabling the Whittington Hospital to act on their patients' feedback in near real time.

Examples include

• Changes to staffing levels at key identified times, ensuring service levels remain high throughout a 24 hour period

• Patient care is being maximised by freeing up staff time

• Costs saving efficiencies are allowing more money to be spent on patient care

“Patients find ViewPoint easy to use which allows us to gather feedback from a much wider range of patients than was previously possible. Collecting real time patient feedback has always been difficult but ViewPoint allows our patients to be included, with a level of anonymity, that makes them feel secure when giving point of experience feedback.”
Chris Giles, Development Manager

Benefits of NHS Questionnaires

1. Fast, effective and accurate patient opinions are now being collected

2. Areas of the Trust in need of improvement are identified more quickly and with more detail

3. Informed actions are taken to improve services for a much wider range of demographic groups than ever before

4. Cost savings on previous methods of capturing patient insight are being realised

*Vaid8™ from CRT uses unique algorithms to filter, sort and quarantine false data, ensuring high quality reporting