People with chronic and long-term conditions should be giving feedback on their healthcare

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Healthwatch England are asking patients with chronic and long-term conditions to give feedback on their care to enable the NHS to spot issues and identify where services may need more help.

They surveyed 1000 people with chronic and long-term conditions about their experiences using health and social care services and found that more than half (54%) are not being regularly asked by services to feed back about their care, and almost two-thirds (62%) do not know how to. However, most people (71%), said they would be willing to provide feedback to help the care and services improve.

When asked about their recent experience of accessing care, more than two-thirds (69%) were able to be seen by their service within three weeks. More than a quarter (27%) of people said the biggest challenge they faced accessing health and social care was longer waiting times, and a fifth (21%) said ineffective or inaccessible booking systems were the main issue.

“Patient feedback is a vital source of information”

The CQC and Healthwatch said that gathering people’s feedback about services and the care they provide is important in identifying and addressing inequalities so that care can be improved.

Louise Ansari, national director at Healthwatch England said: “Patient feedback is a vital source of information to help NHS and social care decision-makers understand if care is working. That’s why it’s concerning to hear that many people living with chronic conditions have not been asked for their views.

“As we head into the winter, the NHS is facing pressures across the whole system. Patient feedback can help by enabling the NHS to spot issues and identify where services may need more help.  It’s important to make more people feel empowered to share their experience, be it good or bad, and to be aware of how their feedback is helping improve support for them and their community.”