Healthwatch East Sussex, the county’s only independent online feedback platform
Since our inception in 2013 we have spent the last seven years advocating the value and benefit of patient feedback in health and social care. Now more than ever amidst a global pandemic, we feel it is even more important for people to continue to share their feedback.
It feels like the whole country has moved online to communicate, meet up, to continue to work, therefore it’s quite timely to talk about the value of an online feedback platform for people who use health and care services.
We offer everyone in East Sussex including health and care providers, the only online platform in the county for you to share your views and experiences. We encourage providers to respond directly to your comments and we share your findings anonymously with local providers and leaders, so improvements can be made.
Some would argue, does patient, carer, user feedback really matter, especially in a pandemic? What’s the point? Is it just an unnecessary distraction at a time of unprecedented crisis? But we know as the number of coronavirus cases are on the decline; Care, much of which has been less visible during this crisis, carried on; for example access to advice and information, a massively important part of the health and care pathway, supportive care at home, mental healthcare, end of life care and Social Care; understanding peoples experiences of those less visible care services will play a crucial part in the recovery process.
By sharing your feedback and experience you are continuing to add to that wealth of concerned citizenship spiritedness, we all experienced at the beginning of the crisis. Your feedback could hold the key to the way services are planned in the future.
We have all witnessed the support for staff and key workers on a weekly basis, but staff too are huge beneficiaries of patient feedback; it can impact on the culture and performance of clinical teams and extends far beyond service improvement, important though that is. Where that feedback may involve aspects of care that is critical, our experiences of sharing those critical views alongside the positive reviews, receive equal merit and do often result in positive outcomes for people and changes in practices. There is a willingness of health and care providers to look beyond patient feedback as just data with more and more making the connection to use the feedback to drive up quality of services.
