Will real-time patient feedback be suitable for my practice?

The pilot study found that all 22 practices were able to manage the requirements of setting up and running real-time patient feedback.

The study also identified a number of postiive factors that could hlep staff and patietns respond well to the introduction of a feedback project. It may be helpful to ask the following questions before you start:

• Do you have the support of your GP partners? This can have a positive impact on how the project is regarded by patients and staff.
• Do you have a dedicated lead for real-time patient feedback? Having a lead person who can manage feedback as part of their regular duties will help to assign clear responsibility for the work.
• Do you have sufficient staff resource to ask patients for feedback? It's important to consider whether your staff will have the time to ask patients regularly for feedback, especially if your practice gets very busy. This may influence the type of equipment you choose.
• Do you have the support of your patient participation group? Patients can be a particularly useful ally in talking to other patients and generating interest on feeding back.
• Do you have a regular footfall of patients to survey? Real-time feedback is most valuable if you can collect a high number of responses. If your practice is very small, or your list size very limited, you may wish to look at other ways of getting patients' views, such as paper surveys or face-to-face interviews. 

The Brook Medical Centre (Northamptonshire) identified early on that clinician support for real-time patient feedback was important. The practice manager spent time at the start of the project securing GP support by explaining that feedback would be very useful in helping the practice to improve and that the results would be available to GPs for analysis.

The Christmas Maltings and Clements Practice (Suffolk) appointed an internal project manager to manage the realtionship wit htheir technology supplier, monitor the level of feedback collected and organise extra 'pushes' for feedback when required, analyse data and communicate regularly with patients and staff on progress.

The Dipton Surgery (County Durham) found it challenging to attract consistently high levels of feedback. Its smaller practice list size (2,500) meant that staff were obliged to ask the same small sample of patients got feedback each time they visited the practice - in some cases, these patients eventually felt they were being over-surveyed. The practice concluded that, in its case, face-to-face communication might be a more effective way for patients to raise areas of concern.

In this section

• What type of technology will suit you best?
• Choosing a supplier

The full Real-time Feedback Appendix is also available in PDF format.