Patients Want ‘Better NHS Data’

Many patients do not know about the performance of their local NHS services, a poll suggests. Nearly a third said they were unaware how their local hospitals and GPs compared to others. And the Policy Exchange think tank poll of 1,000 people also found 79% wanted simple scorecards to refer to.

Experts said it showed the public was interested in NHS performance and exercising choice, but just needed information presented more accessibly. Over half of respondents said the information they had seen to date was “very patchy”. And twice as many thought data on how their services compared to national standards was more important than other providers.

The poll suggested people in the lower social groups would find the information more useful. The findings come as the government presses ahead with giving patients choice over which hospitals they are treated in. Last year, patients were given a choice of at least four local hospitals and by next April that will be extended to all hospitals.

The government is launching a website, called NHS Choices, to help support patients. The website will be up-and-running from the summer – offering patients data on everything from waiting times and cleanliness to multi-media guides of the 40 most common procedures.

Nigel Edwards, head of policy at the NHS Confederation, said: “These findings show that the public are very interested in the performance of their health service.” And Policy Exchange research director Gavin Lockhart said the findings showed it was “not just the middle classes” that wanted NHS information.

But a spokesman for Patient Concern said there was still a long way to go before patients could fully exercise choice. “We need good access to easy-to-understand information and we are not getting that at the moment.”

The Department of Health said: “Genuinely empowering people to exercise choice is essential to creating an even better, more responsive NHS.”