In Summary
The NHS in Suffolk and Norfolk has been responding to our research about people’s experiences of waiting for hospital care. Read on to explore some of the things they have done to improve people’s experiences.
A local action plan
NHS decision-makers have worked on an action plan that included:
- Ensuring ‘waiting well’ information is current and accessible.
- Launching a communications campaign to raise awareness of help available to patients and carers.
- Reviewing how patient choice and referral language is communicated in primary care.
- Working with providers to improve support for patients – particularly in gynaecology, where our research showed the impacts of waiting can be greater.
Preventing harms
Health and care system leaders have taken action to ensure patient harm is effectively recorded and monitored. This is an important way for the NHS to learn and improve from people’s experiences beyond our initial research.
The research has been an important opportunity for NHS leaders to explore the lived experiences that are so often hidden behind complex NHS data and reporting methods. For some, long-term pain has been debilitating and unmanageable, leading to increasing isolation, depression and anxiety. Many others described how their wait for care had affected their employment, relationships, finances, and other aspects of their lives.
Harm reviews in the NHS are critical for services to learn from delays and prevent harm to patients, which can include both physical and psychological impacts of waiting for hospital treatment.
As a result of our research, messaging was issued to NHS providers (including GP practices) about the importance of recording any harm to people as a direct result of waiting for treatment. Providers have been reminded that patient harms (both physical and psychological) should be formally recorded on a ‘Learning From Patient Safety Events’ incident reporting system and shared for services to investigate and respond.
This should help NHS leaders and services to continually learn from people’s experiences and to implement actions that can prevent avoidable harm to patients currently waiting for treatment.
Reflecting on how our research had informed discussions about harm amongst NHS system leaders, Elaine Noske (Non-Executive Board Member – Quality and Safety – for a local Integrated Care Board) said:
“We used a quality committee session, which consisted of clinical leads and commissioners, to conduct a deep dive into the elective care risk on our Board Assurance Framework. The risk articulated that delays to elective care may impact on patient safety and experience. Our deep dive concentrated on understanding how providers could mitigate that risk as far as possible.
“Using the report to hear people’s voices about their experience of harm, provided a sharp focus to our deep dive. We had an insightful discussion which considered how the system measures physical and psychological harm. This resulted in an additional action for providers to review the way they measure harm and to use a more patient-centred approach.
“It’s expected this will lead to a better understanding and help to identify actions needed to reduce instances of patient harm from happening.”
Wendy Herber (Independent Chair, Healthwatch Suffolk) said:
“Our research has provided a new perspective on what it means to come to harm when people are waiting for elective care. It has enabled NHS commissioners to compare local rates of reporting of harm against actual reports of harm people have experienced – and it has highlighted a shortfall. We know that numbers and data are an important part of monitoring NHS services, but it’s only the lived experiences of patients that truly captures the quality of local care.
“This is an issue that is ultimately about the safety of patients waiting for hospital care and the duty of candour the NHS has to both recognise and be transparent about patient harm. Therefore, the action of the ICB to respond to our research in this way, amidst huge pressures in the management of elective care, is commendable.
“This is a clear example of how independently captured lived experience can help systems to understand how gaps in reporting or provision may lead people to crisis, and aid services in acting together to prevent it as much as possible.”