Moving patient experience up the evidence hierarchy

This post is co-authored by Miles Sibley, director of the Patient Experience Library, and James Munro, CEO of Care Opinion.

"Patient experience must no longer be weighted least in the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine". So said Baroness Cumberlege in First Do No Harm - the recent review of large scale avoidable harm in healthcare.

It is an important and powerful statement - but how do we push patient experience up the evidence hierarchy? Unfortunately, there seems little urgency in government, whose response has been described by Cumberlege as woeful.

Rather than wait for an official response, Care Opinion and the Patient Experience Library have decided to act on their own initiative, and act quickly. We have joined forces to integrate search functionality across both platforms - linking over 60,000 written reports on patient experience with more than 400,000 direct comments from patients.

The rationale is simple: if we want patient experience evidence to be better used, the first thing we have to do is make it easier to find.

There are longstanding barriers to getting access to patient experience evidence. These have been documented by the Patient Experience Library in the recent Inadmissible Evidence report. Breaking through those barriers has been a key part of the mission of both Care Opinion and the Patient Experience Library. Both teams have spent years building better, faster and more transparent ways to hear from patients. But until now, both have worked separately.

The join-up, like the rationale, is simple. Enter a search term (eg "XYZ Trust") into Care Opinion and exactly the same term will be automatically entered into the Patient Experience Library. Users can toggle between direct comments from patients, and structured reports and surveys relevant to their search term.

It works in reverse as well: a search in the Patient Experience Library brings results from both the literature and from patient comments on Care Opinion. Users can search by provider, by health condition or by service (eg maternity). Both platforms respond simultaneously to whatever search term has been entered, giving a two-way join up of direct comments and written reports.

The initiative brings together two tried and tested systems to create the UK's biggest public evidence base on patient experience.

Baroness Cumberlege has challenged healthcare to take patient experience evidence more seriously. Government seems to be taking its time to respond. But in the meantime, Care Opinion and the Patient Experience Library are providing the basis for a joined up response right across the NHS.