Piloting Care Opinion within Primary Care

I work as Operations Manager at Cranwich Road Surgery, which is one of the GP practices that sits under City & Hackney GP Confederation.

We are one of the ten practices that are piloting the use of Care Opinion in primary care. We have been promoting Care Opinion to our patients as a way to give us feedback about the practice. Since the start of the pilot in June 2018 we have had 25 patient stories submitted directly to Care Opinion.

Initially when we first introduced Care Opinion I was a bit hesitant towards it, it wasn't my project and I didn't know anything about it. I warmed up to it very quickly when I realised it is a safe place where patients can share their experiences of health or care services.

Now, we want all patient feedback to be submitted via Care Opinion. When we want to check how our service is doing we ask patients to go online and tell their story, or if they don’t have access to the internet, we give them a Care Opinion free-post feedback leaflet to fill out.

We find Care Opinion easy to use. We ask our receptionist to hand out the free post forms or the cards with the web address to patients. This has been working really well, we have had lots great of feedback.

We ask our staff to wear the Care Opinion badges, we have posters on our waiting room TV screen and also have the Care Opinion story telling widget on our website.

All staff have their quota of feedback forms & Care Opinion direct ask cards to give out and they have loved this. It’s no pressure and helps them build on their customer service skills. When we receive an email alert to a new story I or the Practice Manager sends the patient a personalised reply. We feel that all feedback is useful feedback, we use it to help us improve our service to the best it can be. We always take any suggestions from patients into consideration.

From using Care Opinion I have learnt how to respond well online and write replies to feedback more effectively while still keeping it personal and friendly to the patient. Care Opinion also benefits our patients as it’s an easy way for their voices to be heard and acted upon. It feels like the patients are working with us to make sure they are getting the best service possible.

Based on our experience, I would recommend other practices to start using and promoting Care Opinion to their patients. We have seen what a difference it can make to the patient’s life. I feel that Care Opinion is amazing, easy to use and a great way to stay update with your patients and use their feedback constructively.