1. Introduction
Coast Medic strives to always provide a patient centred service. The organisations’ goal is to develop a model of partnership through which patients have a say on how the service is designed, developed and delivered.
Listening to the views of patients is essential to delivering a patient centred service. The organisation wishes to actively involve patients in future service developments. One way this can be achieved is by obtaining and reviewing feedback from patients after care has been given and to implement when appropriate a Patient Participation Group (PPG).
2. Scope
This policy should be referred to when undertaking any feedback activity on behalf of the organisation.
3. Purpose
The purpose of the Policy is to set out clear guidelines to those carrying out such activity so that patients, the Company and staff are protected.
4. Governance
The Company Directors will oversee the activity, will review the Policy and receive the results of any audits carried out. This information will be shared with the board of trustees.
5. Principles
All patient feedback activity carried out on behalf of the Company will be conducted in accordance with the following principles:
- Abide by all relevant UK Laws and Regulations
- All activity should be conducted in an ethical manner
- Minimal disruption should be caused in gathering feedback
- No patient shall be excluded
- All activity will be conducted safely and competently
Principle 1: Abide by all relevant UK Laws and Regulations
All possible steps should be taken to ensure that any communication with patients is kept confidential. It should not be assumed that others in the patient’s household are aware of the patient’s dealings with the Company. To ensure confidentiality is maintained, envelopes marked with the Company logo must not be used.
To help ensure that communication is directly with the patient and nobody else all correspondence must be addressed personally to the patient. Home addresses should be used rather than an incident location. The patient’s name should be used even if the patient is known to be a minor.
Patient identifiable data must be always kept confidential. Patient identifiable data will be required to collect data, but do not use it for reporting purposes without specific patient consent. Only use the patient’s identifiable data for the purposes for which collection was intended.
In order to help assess that the Company treats all of its patients with the same standard of care and dignity, data on the patient’s age, gender and ethnicity may be collected for analysis.
Principle 2: All activity should be conducted in an ethical manner
All projects should be reviewed by the Company Directors before work commences.
Contact with patients seeking feedback should not be sought until at least 14 days have lapsed since the incident. It has been considered that this length of time will allow for the most delicate period of grieving if a patient has died.
Data should not normally be gathered more than one year after an incident.
Memory loss and confusion is expected to be increased after this period. Gathering data within a 6-month period from the incident date is considered best practice.
Principle 3: Minimal disruption should be caused in gathering feedback
The number of questions and pages of any patient feedback project should be kept to a minimum.
Patients should not be contacted by telephone or visited before 09:00 or after 20:30 hours unless previous arrangements have been made with patients or in the response to an emergency call. Patients must never be visited without prior arrangement.
If a patient declines to take part at any stage of a project they should not be pursued any further. Patients not responding to an initial contact should also not normally be pursued.
If a patient requests not to be contacted for future projects this should be adequately recorded.
Methods for obtaining feedback include:
- Requesting verbal feedback and capturing via patient report form
- Telephone
- Email feedback@coastmedic.org.uk
- Via our webpage
- Salus3Cloud reporting
Principle 4: No patient, employee, customer shall be excluded
The Company believes that every patient has the right to give feedback on the service they receive and as such should actively seek such comments.
All patients eligible for a project being conducted should be included in the sample. The only valid exception is when the patient is known to the Company to have died. All other patients should be included in the sample to ensure they are given the opportunity to share their views.
Sometimes a patient that should be included in a survey sample may be difficult to contact due to inaccurate or incomplete contact details being available, or their home address is somewhere difficult to contact e.g. with prison inmates, patients visiting this country etc. In these cases efforts should be made to obtain the correct contact details to include them in the sample.
It is appropriate to exclude patients from a sample where they do not fall into the category of the project being conducted.
Although contact is made directly with the patient, occasionally a patient’s representative may wish to respond in place of the patient, such as when the patient has died, or when the patient is a young child. Such responses should be treated as a valid response and included in the data analysis.
The Company will make every effort to comply with requests from patients for questions to be provided in a different language or format.
The Company will reimburse patients with any reasonable expenses incurred while contributing to a patient feedback activity.
Principle 5: All activity will be conducted safely and competently
Projects conducted externally on behalf of the Company should adhere to all relevant policies and may be audited.
It is highly important that projects should be carried out in a way which will not hinder patient care or service delivery.
Incidences from which the Company is seeking feedback are often a time of crisis for patients. Any employee who is required to speak with patients to acquire feedback should have received training in dealing with difficult and emotional conversations.
All persons conducting interviews with children or vulnerable adults must be have an enhanced disclosure barring service checked. Any convictions cautions or suspicions will be reviewed and individuals with relevant offences will not be permitted to collect or collate patient feedback, in any form.
When conducting interviews staff should carry Company identification and produce it to the interviewee.
Measures should be in place before staff conduct interviews, which reduce risk to the staff member. A minimum of two staff members should be present at interviews to help safeguard both staff and patients. A mobile phone should normally be carried.
Patients should be informed that they may have a representative present during any interview. If a patient is considered as a child or a vulnerable adult a patient representative must be present.
A cover letter should be included in postal survey packs. The letter should introduce the project to patients. It is important to be very clear that the patient need not participate if they so choose.
Patients included in a survey should be made aware of a Company contact that they may contact to ask questions about the project or for assistance with completion of any survey.
Before a project commences a proposal should be passed to the Board of Directors for approval.
Survey responses should be read as soon as possible and ideally the day they arrive with the Company. Any serious concerns should be acted upon as soon as possible.
Any separate letters of appreciation or complaint received should be dealt with in accordance with Company policies.
Principle 6: Complaints procedure.
All complaints will follow the complaints procedure cycle v1 and will be directed to:
- Clinical Complaint – Medical Director
- Corporate Complaint – Chief Executive
- Investigator – H&S Manager and or Operations Manager
The applicable director will be tasked to:
- Acknowledge the complaint within 48hrs and provide a timeline for investigation to the complainant.
- Investigate the complaint
- Add the complaint to the QA meeting for director discussion and action planning
- Discuss with company consultants whilst maintain GDPR.
- Respond to complainant with findings and provide the company feedback if not already complete to enable reflection
- To provide further details to the complainant should they remain dissatisfied as set out below.
- Review in-line with other appropriate company policies such as Duty of Candour, H&S, Meds management etc.
6. Dissatisfaction & Escalation Process
We hope that we can respond to the issues raised in your complaint in an appropriate way. We are keen to learn from the way in which we manage all complaints to try and develop and improve our services.
If you are unhappy about our response or feel that we have not answered the points that you have raised, you should in the first instance refer them back us, so that all appropriate attempts can be made to resolve them.
If you are still dissatisfied, you have the right to take your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, who is independent of the NHS. This service is confidential and free. There are time limits for taking a complaint to the Ombudsman, although this can be waivered if they think there is a good reason to do so.
If you have any questions about whether the Ombudsman will be able to help you, you can contact the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, by visiting their website www.ombudsman.org.uk/make-a-complaint and completing their online complaints form or telephone 0345 015 4033, 8.30am – 5.30pm Monday – Friday.
You can write to the Ombudsman at:
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP