Greenbrook Healthcare
Introduction
In August 2009, Michael Steel, the Chief Executive, and Dan Annetts, the Business Development Director for Greenbrook Healthcare, were looking for a way to utilise their patients’ opinions in order to make improvements and changes to the services they offer.
Greenbrook Healthcare is a provider of high quality NHS services. Building on an established base of General Practice expertise, Greenbrook is raising standards in care by offering patients and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) services which are more accessible, efficient and consistent.
Greenbrook manages NHS GP practices for Hounslow and Surrey PCTs at the Ashford Health Centre in Surrey and at the Bedfont, Brentford, Broadwalk, Chinchilla, Heston and Isleworth surgeries in Hounslow. Greenbrook is improving the level of service to patients registered in these practices, with longer opening times and offering a wider range of NHS medical services.
Greenbrook is looking to develop out from its base in Hounslow and Surrey by serving more patients and by offering a greater range of services. Greenbrook is collaborating with GPs and other health service professionals within Hounslow, Surrey and elsewhere working on a wide range of disciplines including polysystems, urgent/unscheduled care and offering hospital outpatient services to patients in GP surgeries.
The challenge
Having done some research and discovered our website, Dan approached us with the challenge of providing Greenbrook and its associated health centres with an up to date method for monitoring their patient’s experiences in real-time. Greenbrook were looking for actionable feedback in real-time that could be obtained un-intrusively, giving them improved control over their patient’s experiences and quality of service. The key was to provide a service that could identify problem areas as well as successes offering Greenbrook, both a collation of data to offer regular updates to the NHS on how changes were affecting overall service, as well as giving them the ability to monitor and control patient satisfaction.
“If a patient has a poor experience I want to know about it so I can find a solution” Dan Annetts.
Whilst the best opportunity to ask patients for feedback was whilst they were waiting for their appointment, it was essential that patients would be asked their question once their appointment was complete.
“If we ask patients to choose to take part whilst in the waiting room, how can we be sure that their response will be accurate based on their actual experience rather than their expectations?” Michael Steel.
The solution
An important challenge was to ensure that the data collected would be actionable, and oriented towards areas that Greenbrook or the Primary Care Trust were specifically interested in testing or improving. Consequently we had to find a solution that would generate feedback from patients for which the subject could be controlled.
By offering a number of pre-defined questions from which one would be selected at random to be asked of the patient, we were able to ensure that a series of data was collected. The answers were based on a scaled 1-5 response enabling the data to be collated and plotted over time. Though it remained important to hear about known problems for the purposes of collating data and visualising improvements, there were also areas in which patients rarely offered feedback and this was where the service provided a key solution.
With the aid of posters, flyers and specifically designed appointment cards, we were able to draw attention to the service, offering patients the ability to give anonymous feedback without the need for taking long, time consuming questionnaires – a known deterrent when trying to obtain genuine feedback.
To ensure that patients offered accurate data based on their actual experience rather than expectations, a delayed response service was developed to ensure that once a patient had opted into the micro-survey, the question would not be asked for a specific amount of time, ensuring that they had comfortably completed their appointment by the time they received their question.
We now had numerical data to work with, allowing us not only to present the answers to Greenbrook, but also to plot the data within graphs and charts, providing a visual aid over time so that improvements could be seen as well as interpreted. At the same time, this enabled us to show Greenbrook how each of their health centres were performing against one another, giving them greater control over the running of their surgeries and the ability to pin-point problem areas and successes.
Finally, we ensured that as well as receiving the scaled feedback, customers were also able to offer free-text feedback, thus enabling Greenbrook to receive specific compliments and complaints whilst continuing to build a picture of how their surgeries were performing over time. This solution, coupled with an online version of the same service (providing additional means of receiving feedback and developing the bigger picture) has become the standard service on which PatientPulse has continued to build its reputation within the healthcare sector.
The results
Greenbrook now have a steady flow of patient feedback on which to base many of their organisational decisions. Not only has this helped make improvements to their quality and service but it has also increased patient loyalty by showing patients that their opinions are important.
“PatientPulse has offered Greenbrook a solution to a long running challenge that has helped us to continue to make improvements to our services and increase patient loyalty. I would have no problem recommending PatientPulse to anyone looking for a solution to patient feedback and a resource for monitoring success and I look forward to a continued successful business relationship” Dan Annetts
PatientPulse continues to work closely with Greenbrook Healthcare and are always open to developing new solutions for services within the healthcare sector.
