Care Opinion works with nhs.uk, which provides a feedback service for the NHS in England.
We aim to synchronise data between the two sites so that people can see all the stories and responses in one place. Staff can use Care Opinion or nhs.uk to respond to stories.
Important
On 24 January 2024 nhs.uk began changes to their system and temporarily disabled the ability of other sites such as Care Opinion to send them stories or responses.
nhs.uk has not yet restored this ability and has not been able to say when it might be restored.
As a result:
- We are able to pull stories and responses from nhs.uk, but unable to send stories and responses to them.
- You can continue to respond to Care Opinion stories on Care Opinion.
- You should respond to nhs.uk stories on nhs.uk itself for the time being.
We will contact all English subscribers when things are back to normal.
More about how we sync data with nhs.uk
How do I work with NHS.UK feedback on Care Opinion?
Once stories and responses are imported to Care Opinion, you can treat them like all other Care Opinion feedback. So you can create searches, reports, visualisations and digests which include NHS.UK feedback.
You can respond to stories and we will send your first response to NHS.UK (if you are the provider).
If available at your subscription level, you can have alerts for stories and responses we import from NHS.UK.
You can also search Care Opinion and NHS.UK feedback separately if you want to.
What limitations are there?
Because Care Opinion and NHS.UK operate differently, there are some limitations on how well we can make the data sharing work.
Limitations for stories
Stories on Care Opinion have tags for what what good, what could be better, and how someone felt. Stories from NHS.UK don't have these tags.
When we moderate Care Opinion stories, we add a criticality score. Stories coming from NHS.UK don't have this score.
When we import a story from NHS.UK, we may try to link the story to a more specific service on Care Opinion - for example a specialty within a hospital. We can't always do this.
Because we have no author details for NHS.UK stories, we can't contact the author or clarify anything in the story.
Limitations for responses
We can usually import responses posted on NHS.UK.
We can't send all our responses to NHS.UK. We can only send the first response from each provider. This is because NHS.UK shows just a single response per story.
Time limits
Care Opinion aims to keep all stories and responses online indefinitely. This is because, in line with our mission, we think that stories and responses can help lead to learning and change for very many years after they are shared.
For example, stories are used by medical, nursing and other students across the UK in their training. The age of a story does not limit the learning value.
NHS.UK policy is to remove stories and responses two years after publication. As a result you will find stories originally shared on NHS.UK are still available on Care Opinion long after they have disappeared from NHS.UK.
Note that if you post a response on Care Opinion to a story which was originally told on NHS.UK more than two years ago, your response will not reach the story author.