At the heart of our organisation

For us, good Patient Experience is at the heart of what we do. It is our ethos - our mantra if you like.

Of course, this isn't without its challenges. As a commissioning organisation, it can be difficult to remain focussed on how our work affects patients. We are predominantly office based, not providing hands on care to patients and not in a clinical environment - our challenge is to keep in focus that there is a patient or patients, their familes, carers and staff at the end of our decisions.

In many ways I think the decisions we make affect patients more than we think. Of course, this doesn't mean that we won't have to make unpopular or sensitive decisions but it's  how we listen to and engage with patients and other stakeholders when making changes that can help us with communicating difficult messages.

We use Patient Opinion to help us get an overarching picture of what people say about the services we commission. We find people are a lot more honest on Patient Opinion than they might be if they contacted us directly. We also monitor how the organisations we commission respond to their comments and how quickly they do this. It's  not to check up on them, but to ensure that they can demonstrate that the views have been heard. We report bi-monthly to our governing board on what people are saying about our services through Patient Opinion and this is well received. The comments on Patient Opinion do not stand alone and are part of our wider Patient Experience intelligence.

There is no doubt in my mind that for all NHS organisations to be successful, they have to engage with and hear what the people who use, interact with and work for our services think, even when its really hard to hear. Above all the money and finance issues, understanding how we impact on people makes us able to change and adapt.