Patient Opinion as a tool for Healthwatch

At Patient Opinion our mission is to provide an online platform so that:

• people can share honest feedback easily and without fear
• stories are directed to wherever they can help make a difference, and
• everyone can see how and where services are listening and changing in response

We’ve been doing this since 2005. The stories on Patient Opinion have now been read over 85 million times, with a diverse range of impacts on people, policy and practice.

Ever since Healthwatch got underway in 2013 we’ve felt there was a natural fit between Healthwatch functions and our own mission.

For example, one key Healthwatch function is:

“obtaining the views of local people about their needs for, and experiences of, local care services and importantly, to make these views known.”

And beyond this close mission fit, we also have core values in common. Like local healthwatch, Patient Opinion is a non-profit social enterprise.

So it is encouraging that a number of local healthwatches have adopted Patient Opinion as a helpful tool in support of their work. This short video shows how Tameside Healthwatch is using Patient Opinion to support people and share experiences of care.

Recently, we’ve added a range of new features to Patient Opinion in response to feedback from healthwatch staff, to make the platform more useful. For example:

• Our smart alerts can let you know about stories which remain unread, or which still need a response or some change to be made
• Because story authors can rate responses, you can easily identify stories where the author may need additional support even after a provider response
• Our story widget can easily be embedded on your own site and even has a healthwatch theme
• Our story visualisations make it easy to share the major themes of local feedback in meetings and drill down to the specific stories behind the themes
• Our built-in flexible reporting means you can easily summarise and share feedback with others
• Our weekly email digests allow you to keep on top of local activity with little effort
• Our API (data feeds) means you can pull our data automatically into your own system for further analysis, if you want

We understand that some people will want their own local feedback system. But there is a lot to be said for an innovative national system driven by the same values which inform healthwatch.

Patient Opinion is underpinned by over a decade of learning and testing, is accessible and accountable, is continuously developing, and shares feedback automatically across the local - and national - health economy.

Patient Opinion is used by hundreds of organisations across the UK, including educators and researchers, and has an international reputation.

Online feedback doesn't have to be expensive. A healthwatch subscription to Patient Opinion costs just £495 per annum plus vat.

If this interests you, do get in touch and find out more.