Patients are getting more and more information about hospitals. Before you are referred to one for treatment, you can see each hospital’s success rates for the operation you need and you can even see infection rates for MRSA and other hospital acquired infections. In future, this information will be available for each ward.
The data itself needs interpretation and is only as accurate as the information collected, which is pretty patchy. But it does offer a springboard for meaningful patient choice although it is of limited use for people with asthma.
Of more interest to most of us is likely to be choice of GP. Politicians are keen to extend choice over general practice too. But so far there is much less data available.
What data do you think should be published?
To give patients choice over who to see within their local practice, I think it would help to know which GP has an interest in asthma and which nurse has been trained in asthma. Many know this from experience but having the information systematically available would make it easier for the majority to book useful appointments. And if I knew my local practice did not have someone with an interest or training, I would know to register elsewhere.
To give patients choice between practices, I’d like to see data published on repeat hospital admissions (a danger sign, I think, of poor quality practice) as well as data on patient experience. For example, does the practice offer telephone consultations, asthma clinics, bookable appointments with a specialist and what chance do you have of being seen within 24 hours when it’s urgent?
This kind of data would be much more effective, I think, than comments about individual doctors of the kind we see in the USA and are beginning to see on some websites in the UK. And it would enable patient choice to work for the patient and, ultimately, the practice too.
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Kim
6 July 09Report comment